Tuesday, November 02, 1999
Board won't give job to Broadnax
Attempt to change ground rules fails
BY PHILLIP PINA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The candidacy of Stanley Broadnax to run the city's empowerment zone is all but dead.
Last month, the Cincinnati Empowerment Zone board of trustees voted 16-6 to hire Mr. Broadnax, the former health commissioner convicted of drug charges, as its chief executive officer, overseeing millions of dollars to rehabilitate nine of the city's poorest neighborhoods. He needed 18 votes to be hired.
At Monday's board meeting, a move to change its bylaws and possibly make it easier to hire Mr. Broadnax failed. Trustee David Kirk said the inability to win election for Mr. Broadnax is no reason to start changing the structure and bylaws of a committee.
Under current rules, the 33-member board needs a 70-percent majority of those in attendance and a minimum of 17 votes to pass any action. At least 20 members must also be present. When the board voted at its October meeting on the hiring of Mr. Broadnax, 27 members attended.
A proposal considered by the board on Monday was to require a majority of the members present to pass any actions. Under the proposal, the 16 votes supporting Mr. Broadnax would have been more than enough.
But the rule change got only six votes among the 24 members present.
While Mr. Broadnax has not officially taken his name out of consideration for the job, he has since taken on a consulting job, said Kathye Lewis, a board trustee.
The candidacy of Mr. Broadnax was a controversial one. Cincinnati City Manager John Shirey said hiring Mr. Broadnax would add to the difficulties of the fledgling group. A member of the board, Mr. Shirey voted against hiring Mr. Broadnax, as well as the proposed rule change.
Mr. Broadnax was Cincinnati's first and only African-American health commissioner, appointed in 1979. A champion of minority health issues and services to the poor, Mr. Broadnax quit in 1993, after The Cincinnati Enquirer revealed he took sick time to moonlight as a doctor at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.
That same year, he was sued by the city for ignoring repeated violations on property he owned in Mount Auburn. Then, in February 1994, he was arrested on drug charges, accused of selling cocaine.
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