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0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

Private firm paid $70K to run pension petition drive

A Cincinnati group trying to revamp Cincinnati’s troubled pension system through a charter amendment paid a California firm nearly $70,000 to put petition circulators out on the streets of Cincinnati.

Cincinnati for Pension Reform, a group that includes some long-time tea party activists, says it collected nearly 16,000 signatures, which are now being checked by the Hamilton County Board of Elections. They need the valid signatures of 7,443 Cincinnati voters to put the issue on the November ballot.

According to documents filed with the board of elections, Cincinnati for Pension Reform paid Amo Petition Consultants of Carlsbad, Calif., $69,529.50 to run its petition drive.

City council members have come out against the plan, which would make city employees hired after January 2014 participate in a retirement plan, contributing up to 9 percent of the employees’ base compensation.

Current pension recipients would see no change in their existing pensions, with the exception of a cap of  three percent  increase in any one year.

The city’s pension fund is now only 61 percent funded. In the early 2000’s, it was 100 percent funded.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.