Columbus corporate consent manufacturing machine goes 'brrr' for #NWSLtoColumbus
We only need to look to Cleveland to see where a "benign conspiracy" of "civic-minded CEOs" will lead Columbus.
Back in 2019, the illustrious Sam Allard, then of the alt-weekly Cleveland Scene, wrote about a 30-year-old article that foretold the political problems that plague the city through today.
It described how “a benign conspiracy of CEOs” tapped George Voinovich, who would prove to be one of the most corrupt politicians in Ohio history, to lead their political response against the populist mayoralship of Dennis “The Menace” Kucinich.
The article, titled “How Business Bosses Saved a Sick City,” by Myron Magnet, was later anthologized in Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader, edited by Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz and David C. Perry. The contents of the article resonate years later. Residents have watched as cooperation among the city’s business and political leaders has proven extraordinary beneficial, time and again, to the businesses doing the cooperating. Meanwhile, the city itself — I’m referring here to the physical area and the people who live within it — is still bedeviled by the ills that made Cleveland “a microcosm, almost a caricature” of industrial America’s woes during the middle 20th century.
Here’s the key paragraph:
“E. Mandell de Windt, the now retired CEO of Eaton Corp. and unofficial dean of Cleveland businessmen, organized the troops and devised a strategy, setting in motion a benign conspiracy of executives and entrepreneurs that still operates. The impressive feat of organizing that cabal and persuading Cleveland’s most senior businessmen to take charge of the grittiest aspects of civic life was the real key to the town’s turnaround. Cleveland bosses are arguably more public spirited than most, but they had hitherto focused that spirit on their especially successful United Way or their superb art museum or the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra, not on bread-and-butter civic matters.
By the start of the Eighties, though, top executives realized they had to get their hands dirty if they wanted to keep viable the Cleveland life they liked so much — the Cleveland of excellent cultural institutions and big-league athletic teams, the Cleveland ringed by enviably comfortable, old-fashioned, family-oriented suburbs, where $300,000 buys you $1 million worth of house by New York City or Boston suburban standards.”
As Allard noted, what these business leaders hated most about Kucinich was that he treated these apparent titans of humanity as “the archenemy,” mainly because he fought to protect public utilities from privatization.
Ohioans see the effects of the privatization of public utilities every time they open one of their bills from our most beautiful energy conglomerates.
It’s also easy to see what that business-first mentality did for the residents of Cleveland:
That strategy has had identifiable results: Cleveland is among the nation’s poorest, hungriest and most segregated cities, one where students attempted or considered suicide more than students at every other big city school district in the country in 2017. These are hardly hallmarks of a flourishing economy.
In his somewhat of a tell-all book, disgraced (and deceased) parasite lobbyist Neil Clark claimed Voinovich would “turn off his hearing aides” whenever his brother discussed their various public corruption projects as governor.
Coincidentally enough, Leslie Wexner, an unindicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein who House Oversight Democrats believe repeatedly lied under oath, told the Harvard Business Journal that Voinovich advised him to “organize” Columbus in the same way.
Voinovich’s advisement led to the birth of the Columbus Partnership, which Wexner said Wolfe family patriarch J.W. Wolfe originally pitched as a civic-minded organization that got to decide “who’s mayor and where the highways went.”
The Columbus Partnership pitches itself as “a non-profit, membership-based organization of CEOs from Columbus’ leading businesses and institutions” to “drive meaningful economic growth and prosperity for Columbus.”
It ignores that their mission is what we elect the mayor and City Council to do.
But much like the Republican sinecure syndicate of JobsOhio, it’s the typical “public-private partnership” that empowers an unelected, unaccountable body of CEOs to siphon hundreds of millions of public dollars into private interests.
Franklin County Auditor Michael “da Gawd” Stinziano released a report in 2025 that shows how much tax revenue has been forgone by the Partnership’s preferred arrangement of tax abatements to spur the cherished “prosperity” of Columbus.
Three key metrics compiled from 2016 to 2024 stand out:
Total Foregone Tax: $126,798,337
Total Diverted TIF Tax: $150,976,050
Tax abamatements incereased 143.3% since 2016
These tax abatements never include clawback language, even if the receiving enterprise fails to produce anything close to the numbers they pitched while securing these oh-so-critical tax breaks.
We saw the most recent example with CoverMyMeds, an organization led by Matt Scantland, whose brother, Pete Scantland, sits on the Partnership’s Board of Advisors as CEO of Orange Barrel Media.
From Samantha Hendrickson of The Columbus Dispatch on March 30:
Columbus-based CoverMyMeds is restructuring and letting multiple teams of employees go just two years after massive layoffs.
The health technology firm, owned by health care services company McKesson, announced the “transition” in an internal email obtained by The Dispatch on March 27. In 2023, the company laid off over 800 people and closed their Arizona branch.
An internal email did not specify the number of people who would "ultimately separate" from CoverMyMeds, but the layoffs and restructuring were due to "products and services that no longer align with [CoverMyMeds'] future direction." The first layoffs will begin in early June, though others impacted by layoffs won't lose their jobs before January 2027.
CoverMyMeds received a 15-year, 100% property-tax abatement worth up to $77.7 million in 2018.
After CoverMyMeds laid off 800 employees in 2023, then-mayoral candidate Joe Motil noted that in the nine months prior to Dec. 31, 2022, CoverMyMeds posted a revenue of $3.2 billion, with profits over $400 million.
Motill’s call to scuttle the $77 million swindle of Columbus went unheeded at City Hall, with Mayor Suburbs soaring to re-election later that year.
Columbus is witnessing another public-partnership swindle, led by the Partnership of civic-minded CEOs, in the plan to gift $50 million in public money to billionaire MAGA crook Jimmy Haslam for an NWSL training facility that would scrap the long-awaited transformation of McCoy Park, the only public greenspace available in a neighborhood with the shortest life expectancy in the state of Ohio.
As The Rooster exclusively reported on March 30, OneColumbus, a subsidiary of the Columbus Partnership, is behind the astroturfed campaign #NWSLtoColumbus to manufacture consent for a plan to propagate the scam that is public subsidies for billionaire profits.
We saw them at work on Monday, outside City Hall, holding a rally to peddle the notion of grassroots support for the plan.
OneColumbus, as another unaccountable public-private partnership, will never be forced to reveal how much it paid for this campaign.
But while Mayor Suburbs felt the need to take a picture with his fellow cartoon characters… It’s worth noting that the Clippers, the Crew, and the Columbus Blue Jackets all receive public subsidies while their leaders sit on the Partnership's Board of Advisors.
Susan “Sweet Dee” Haslam, owner-operator of the Crew, and wife of Jimmy Haslam, the MAGA superdonor seeking $50 million in public subsidies as part of the plan. The Crew received $140 million in public funding for a new stadium as part of the “Save the Crew” effort.
The Haslams also closed on a $25 million mansion in Palm Beach in 2025, days after the Haslam Group successfully extorted $600 million from the Republican-dominated State Legislature for a new Cybertruck of a stadium in Brook Park, defying the wishes of the Cleveland City Council and the Cuyahoga County Commission.
Michael “Mike” A. Priest, CEO & President of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the main beneficiary of the planned $100 million in public bonds for a $400 million renovation to Nationwide Arena.
Stephen (Steve) D. Steinour, CEO, President & Chairman of Huntington Bancshares Incorporated, sits on the Partnership's Executive Board. Huntington sponsors the Columbus Clippers Stadium.
Also in attendance at the rally, as pictured in today’s header photo, was notorious Epstein associate Brutus Buckeye.
New Ohio State President Ravi Bellamkonda and Wexner Medical Center President John J. Warner, MD, sit on the Columbus Partnership's Board of Advisors.
At the rally, Mayor Suburbs posed for a campaign photo while holding a “COLUMBUS LOVES WOMEN’S SPORTS” t-shirt, with which The Rooster took some artistic license in today’s header photo.
But it’s apparently easier for our beautiful mayor to hold a t-shirt as part of a corporate astroturf campaign to support women, rather than donate the $90,000 he has taken from Wexner, the unindicted Epstein co-conspirator who co-founded the Partnership and is still listed as “Chairman Emeritus.”
The rally, meant to show the organic, grassroots support for the plan, was actually orchestrated by Irvin Public Relations, a longtime Columbus-based firm that was paid an amount of money, likely from OneColumbus, that taxpayers footing the bill will never be able to ascertain through a public records request.
The shell game emerges at city council, with only two members apparently ready to do due diligence in public on a $25 million upfront payment to a crooked billionaire
Rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Councilmember Nick Bankston, a longtime personal friend of Council President Shannon Hardin, is looking for an exit from the council in order to “make money” in the private sector.
Bankston, who has two young children, is apparently feeling the affordability crunch like the rest of us despite his part-time council salary as well as an unspecified salary as the Director of Community Partnership & Strategic Initiatives at Alvis, a Columbus-based “nonprofit human services agency” that receives at least some of its revenue through a “partnership” with City Council.
The Rooster cannot confirm those rumors at this time. Councilman Bankston will be the first to say he’s no fan of our operation.
But, if Bankston were looking to “make money” in the private sector, one way to do so would be showing he can be trusted to shepherd yet another billionaire payout through the council under the guise of manufactured grassroots support.
I’m not saying that’s what’s happening! But if it were, it would look a lot like what transpired at City Council on Monday in front of about 70 residents.
The Rooster commended Council President Shannon Hardin for rebuffing the Haslam Group’s initial demand for a $25 million payment to subsidize the future training facility for a yet-to-be-secured women’s professional soccer franchise.
In his initial statement, Hardin cited the need for Columbus capital money to be spent on sidewalks, rec centers and fire stations throughout the city.
It was more resistance than Mayor Suburbs, Hardin’s opponent in the upcoming 2027 mayoral election, was willing to offer.
While praising Hardin in the March 30 dispatch, The Rooster noted that it’s fair to be suspicious of the move, given that Hardin, like Suburbs, came to power through the city’s archaic machine politics.
Unfortunately, Hardin’s still trying to play both sides of the fence—offering notable differentiation from the mayor while still showing he’s willing to play ball with the unaccountable Columbus Partnership.
Hardin, of all people in Columbus, knows the outsized role that those “civic-minded CEOs” play within our local politics.
Hardin returned days later with a plan to increase the local ticket tax at Crew Stadium from 5% to 7%, a two-percent increase that he claimed would mean only the local residents who attended stadium events would foot the bill.
But the plan was never released in full to the public before Monday’s meeting, where we learned the brutal truth: The Haslam Group would receive a $25 million upfront payment, which would mature to more than $27 million through interest on bond payments in a deal that, by the city’s own math, wouldn’t make taxpayers whole for 26 years—if ever.
The first three speakers before the council, given special seating usually reserved for media, city hall staffers or lower public officials, all had a connection to the Partnership.
Haslam Group President of Business Operations Mary Shepro, who pitched the local investment they would offer without mentioning the kind of things that could be done with a spare $25 million in this year’s capital budget.
Linda Logan, the President & CEO of the Greater Columbus Sports Commission, an organization that touts a mission to “rally Columbus to bid on and win sporting events.” The Sports Commission lists the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Columbus Crew, and the Ohio State University as “championship partners.” Mary Shepro sits on the Executive Committee.
Cassie Sistrunk, a three-year women’s soccer letterman at Ohio State. Left unsaid: Her husband, Randall Sistrunk, is a former city council member, fellow Alpha Fraternity brother of Hardin’s, and the current Vice President of “Public-Private Partnerships” at the aforementioned Partnership-connected Orange Barrel Media.
No council member offered the appearance of interest in doing due diligence on a $25 million upfront payment to a billionaire, except Melissa Green and Nancy Day-Achauer.
Green, Day-Achauer, and Tiara Ross were the only council members who stayed in their seats throughout the entire meeting.
Councilwoman Green revealed that the Arts Council, the recipient of the previous 5% ticket tax, has called the actual money produced “underwhelming”—a canary in the coalmine of any notion that the public will ever be made “whole” through a two percent ticket tax increase.
Eventually, however, the hogs got to have their say:
Most people know I’m a recovering alcoholic. Not as many people know I’m also a recovering fan of the Cleveland Browns.
In retrospect, watching Jimmy Haslam pay $270 million guaranteed to a brittle sexpest who wasn’t even good at playing quarterback anymore was the final straw.
But if it wasn’t, watching Haslam extort $600 million from our Republican fiscal hawks in the State Legislature for a Cybertruck of a stadium in the suburban wasteland of Brook Park would have been.
Days later, the Haslams closed on a $25 million mansion in Palm Beach—the same number they now have their hands out for in Columbus.
Haslam is a crook. His company defrauded minority truck owners, and he would have been in prison for the scheme, rather than paying $92 million to settle the lawsuit with federal prosecutors.
Unsurprisingly, he (and his entire family) are MAGA superdonors. They spent $6.5 million on politics in under two years.
Jimmy and “Sweet Dee” were the largest donors to the effort to defeat the anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment in 2024. They donated $175,000 to Bitcoin aficionado Bernie Moreno to oust then-Senator Sherrod Brown as the chair of the Banking Committee.
And that’s just a taste of some of their greatest hits.
Their largess is only attainable through our broken tax code, which pigs like Haslam have paid government stooges to tilt in their favor in their insatiable quest for more money.
They donate to the same politicians who have defunded local governments, leaving Columbus unable to fund the Gladen Food Pantry in West Franklinton.
There are only “East,” “West,” and “South” Franklintons because Wexner and the Partnership drove three highways through the neighborhood, segregating it from downtown despite being a stone’s throw over the river.
We should expect this behavior from the Republican Party. We should never accept it from so-called leaders of the Democratic Party. On any level.
Columbus educator destroys the tax-abatement swindle that has led to Republican-like defunding of our local schools
Kelsey Gray, an English teacher at Independence High School, spent hours of her spring break waiting in line to testify against the deal and highlight the robbery happening in broad daylight within our public schools.
City Council isn’t to blame for the Republican-dominated state legislature’s never-ending quest to privatize public education. But as she noted, the city council is “at least aware” of the situation.
My favorite part was when she turned to Mary Shepro, apologized, and then dispelled the myth that the Crew’s “Stay in the Game” initiative was anything more than a drop in the ocean that is chronic absenteeism in Columbus City Schools.
It made me wonder what the City Schools could have done with that $126 million in forgone tax that the City Council chose to put in the pockets of corporations, developers, and billionaire-owned sports teams through the Partnership’s fetish for so-called “tax incentives.”
What McCoy Park means to South Franklinton
Columbus City Council recently greenlit funding for a long-awaited transformation of McCoy Park, the only public green space available in the city’s poorest neighborhood, with a life expectancy of 60, the lowest in the state.
Or so neighborhood residents thought!
Southwest Area Commissioner Liz Reed spoke about plans to transform McCoy Park into a place every resident, disabled or abled, could enjoy: pickleball courts, rolling paths, sheltered picnic areas and bathrooms, and even a fishing lake.
That all went away when the Patnership and Haslam snapped their fingers.
Worse yet, the city recently “streamlined” neighborhood feedback reports going back to the late 2000s. The number one concern? Flooding and pondage issues.
The city had identified fixing McCoy Park drainage as a way to alleviate that problem for the neighborhood. One well-connected West Side source said the city has been “noncommittal” about those plans once the Halsams’ Death Star appeared over the park.
In my opinion, the Haslams chose McCoy Park because it was most likely the cheapest option available within Columbus, even if it meant their team of world-class athletes would be breathing highway smog while training.
If the city’s plan is to create a new park for South Franklinton, the options don’t look great if they’re unwilling to bulldoze some gravestones in Mount Calvary or Green Lawn cemeteries.
Maybe they could renovate the landfill?
McCoy Park is a vibrant area, especially on weekends, despite everyone needing to travel to the park via personal vehicle because there are no sidewalks on Harmon Avenue or Stimmel Road.
It’s a wonder how many of those residents who will be down there this weekend to play soccer even know the consolidated corporate power that’s moving against them at City Hall.
Probably not many.
Earthworm Jim gets his chance to repeat a bunch of made-up statistics about “economic impact” and “workplace development”
Columbus Partnership CEO Jason Hall schlepped to City Hall to add his two cents, as if it was needed.
Hall, whose organization still lists unindicted Epstein co-conspirator Leslie Wexner as a chairman emeritus, pitched the “workforce development” that would come with Central Ohio girls being able to watch a women’s soccer team.
He also recited the factoids already listed on the ColumbusOne-produced #NWSLtoColumbus webpage.
“80 percent of female Fortune 500 CEOs played competitive sports,” Hall said.
In his defense, it’s probably true! But you start to wonder whether sports played a bigger role in their current position than their parents’ incomes or their attendance at elite private schools.
Hall’s organization apparently doesn’t have much to say for the girls who don’t play competitive sports in Columbus, since programs have been slashed across the city due to historic budget shortfalls that are frankly becoming unsustainable.
I would argue that allocating the $50 million that Columbus and Franklin County plan to gift to Haslam would do more for girls’ futures in the city.
West High School, which I bike past almost every day, could use a sizable investment from the capital budget.
But what do I know? I’m just a blogger, not the CEO of a group of “civic-minded CEOs” whose idea of prosperity seems to be starving public coffers and privatizing the political power in Columbus and Central Ohio.
I went into the hallway, expecting to have a civil conversation with Mr. Hall after his little propaganda sermon. My first question probably would have been, “How much do you make a year, brother?”
Because those are the types of questions that don’t get answers in the private half of the so-called “partnership.”
My second question would have been, “If this is going to be such an amazing ‘economic impact’ on Central Ohio, why does OneColumbus need to astroturf its petition drive?
“Why do they need to pay a public relations firm to host a ‘rally’ with mascots to present the idea of grassroots support? Why do they need to roll out a dog and pony show at the city council?
Perhaps in the most obvious display of how much influence the Partnership holds in City Hall, staffers allowed Mr. Hall and his henchman to abscond through a second-story emergency exit with a disabled alarm rather than face the music from a low-rent blogger.
This is how politics actually functions in Columbus.
The unaccountable CEO class colludes in private and goes to the mayor.
He goes to the council, sometimes without even presenting them the full set of facts.
But everyone, except apparently two council members, will still pretend that ejecting our poorest residents from their only public green space and paying $50 million to a billionaire crook like Haslam for a women’s professional soccer expansion team will lead to more prosperity for everyone in the city.
Because we know how Haslam-produced sports productions go. The Milwaukee Bucks went from an NBA championship to the toilet. The Browns somehow found new depths in their eternal damnation to the toilet. The Crew got lucky because Haslam wasn’t hands-on with them when they won a championship, but now that he is, they’re having the worst season in recent memory.
And this is the guy we’re bending over to gift $50 million, so he can turn around and buy another mansion or make a max donation to some Republican hobgoblin who thinks women shouldn’t vote?
In reality, Columbus will likely receive another pedestrian sports team with another set of suites for the executive class to treat their mistresses to free vittles and suds on weeknights before drunk driving them home to their off-campus apartments.
If it were such a good idea that would lead to such prosperity, the Columbus Partnership wouldn’t have to spend an untold amount on a circus trying to gaslight us into believing the city is clamoring for more public money for private billionaire profits.
This measure would crash and burn at the ballot box in an up-or-down vote. If the council can’t come to its senses on this, then it’s just another example of who they ultimately serve in Columbus.
We only need to look to Cleveland to see what awaits us the second Columbus stops growing, thanks to our own Republican shadow government of “benign conspiracy of civic-minded CEOs” that we’ve allowed to take root in our humble attempt at a city.
Amazing article. How the rich continue to live off the backs of citizens. Thank you for this in depth explanation of grift. You are the most generous person in the room.
Bravo! The work you’ve done here used to take an entire team of city hall reporters. Since the demise of local investigative reporting, the clowns you expose probably thought the days of accountability were over. Now these rodents need to run and hide in their bunkers at Scioto Country Club.