whatshappening

An article penned by Kenton County Judge-Executive for the occasionally published What’s Happening in Kenton County was again the topic of conversation among members of the Fiscal Court.

The winter/spring edition of What’s Happening featured a question-and-answer style column by Arlinghaus about how the Kenton County Airport Board functions and operates. The board, where all voting members are appointed by Arlinghaus, oversees the governance of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) which is owned by Kenton County and has been the subject of intense scrutiny following a series of articles in the Cincinnati Enquirer that highlighted expenses for travel and food & alcohol at meetings.

The board’s chair, vice chair, and a third member all resigned recently. Kentucky State Auditor Adam Edelen has launched an examination of the board’s books.

Another article in the Enquirer motivated the publisher of What’s Happening to address the Fiscal Court on Tuesday morning in Independence.

Andrea Shepard rose to speak upon what she called “a rather contentious article in the Enquirer a couple months ago”. “We’ve had a nice working relationship with the Fiscal Court and I just want to clear up some misunderstandings in that article,” Shepard said.

The January 15 article in the Enquirer was titled, “Newsletter’s CVG Article Questioned” and included comments from County Commissioners Kris Knochelmann and Beth Sewell who disagreed with the idea of publishing the CVG piece without the review and consent of the full Fiscal Court.

The issue was raised at a Fiscal Court meeting that followed its publication.

The Enquirer article also referred to What’s Happening as a “county newsletter” and that is one of multiple reasons Shepard chose to speak to the Judge-Executive and county commissioners. She pointed out that the publication is a county newsletter, but it’s privately owned by her company, Rivertown Communications, LLC.

“And the entire company is standing here today,” Shepard said, calling herself a one-woman band.

She created her first What’s Happening in Boone County in 1991 after moving there from a Cincinnati suburb. Shepard said she found the community to be unwelcoming and said there was not a positive distribution of information.

“Here it was the fastest growing county east of the Mississippi and yet, those of us who were coming in and paying taxes, there seemed to be no place for us,” she said. “The newspapers were filled with vitriol, who didn’t like whom. There was no roadmap, no common place where I could find out if I could ride my bike or not.”

So, “with a bit of a bad attitude”, Shepard went to the Boone County Fiscal Court and said that “the other side of growth is hospitality”.

The Fiscal Court, along with the county school system, were the first to sign on to a county-wide publication. 

By the end of that year, all Boone County public organizations were invited to participate. “They all have the same market and it was silly for any of them to try to do individual newsletters when we could all do that together,” Shepard said.

Boone County’s edition is now in its twenty-fourth year and comes out three times annually.

What’s Happening now has editions in Boone, Kenton, Campbell, and Oldham Counties where Shepard applies the same rules from when she started out: There will be no politicking or self-promotion of an individual, no negative comments or derogatory attitudes, and the publication would include only useful information that citizens could use as a resource.

“It is not a newspaper,” Shepard said.

All articles are paid for by the entities that wish to be featured. Shepard writes none of the content and only lays out the publication and ensures its distribution via mail to every household in the counties in which it’s published.
 
But politicking can be tough to avoid in an election year, and Arlinghaus is being challenged by Knochelmann in the Republic primary for Judge-Executive in May. There is no Democratic candidate. The Fiscal Court, made up entirely of Republicans, has been divided by two-to-two votes or positions on issues throughout the past few years. Knochelmann and Sewell tend to be on one side while Arlinghaus and Commissioner Jon Draud fall on the other.
 
Those dividing lines were on display when the Airport Board was also the topic of a contentious Fiscal Court meeting in late February where Knochelmann called for certain changes in the board and also for an endorsement of the airport’s CEO through resolutions he presented. Arlinghaus and Draud accused Knochelmann of bringing the campaign into the proceedings. 
 
Both resolutions failed on 2-to-2 ties.
 
Even the What’s Happening article landed in the middle of the two Fiscal Court duos. Draud approved of Arlinghaus’s explanation of the Airport Board.
 
“My friends at Five Seasons thought it was very helpful from a historical point of view. I never even thought about it in a political context,” Draud told the Enquirer in January.
 
“We (as a fiscal court) do not (appoint) any of the board members. And yet, it appears that the article represents the thoughts of all of us,” Sewell told the Enquirer in January. Sewell had sent an email expressing her concerns about the piece, arguing that it appeared to contain opinion, but said Arlinghaus did not respond which is why she brought it up at a public meeting. Knochelmann said Arlinghaus should have responded to Sewell’s email and that articles published in What’s Happening should have unanimous consent of the Fiscal Court, according to the Enquirer article.
 
The Enquirer article, by reporter Cindy Schroeder, also indicated that Knochelmann and Sewell did not dispute the accuracy of the content in Arlinghaus’s piece.
 
While the Fiscal Court does allocate funds for its appearances in What’s Happening it does not produce it, something that citizens have often been confused about. 
 
“A lot of people think it’s a county publication and you really don’t want anyone thinking that because people would be angry about how their money is spent,” Shepard said.
 
Because Shepard’s publications are sent to every residence, 67,000 in Kenton County, she views it as a reasonable investment of public funds. Kenton County Fiscal Court purchases four pages, twice a year at a cost of $1,000 per page. By her math, the County spends 2.3 cents per resident per page.
 
“So, the 2.3 cents you pay to let me know what’s going on in parks, the Fiscal Court, with the roads, I think it’s quite a bargain,” Shepard said. “The (Enquirer) article implied that the letter Judge Arlinghaus had written was politically motivated.”
 
“I’m an apolitical animal, but I think he would attest that I did sharp editing.”
 
Shepard does not typically edit the content of articles outside of the three ground rules she spelled out earlier. “In that particular case, it was very important, I believe, that people knew how their tax money was being spent in regards to CVG,” Shepard said. “We changed the entire article to make it question-and-answer, to make it clinical.”
 
She said she tested the article on people to ensure that it was not political. “I don’t allow any other counties to say anything bad about another county. This CVG thing is kind of a regional issue,” Shepard said. “I also edited other people’s letters to make sure there was nothing at all political about what they were saying.”
 
Shepard, who now lives in Kenton County, said out of her four publications, Kenton is actually the weakest and she doesn’t know why, though she added that the Kenton edition could survive without future Fiscal Court participation.
 
“If you like the publication, I would appreciate anyone letting me know any ideas of how I could grow it because it is a valuable asset,” Shepard said. “It never would have lasted this long had people perceived it to be a mouthpiece for any person.”
 
Draud said he would support exploring ways to keep the publication growing. Sewell also complimented the publication.
 
“It’s been brought up a couple times in the context of Fiscal Court meetings,” Sewell said, adding that she would like to see some policy set on how articles are sent to What’s Happening so that Shepard is not forced to endure an intense editing process. Sewell also said that she told the Enquirer reporter that the publication was privately held but that that was left out of the January article. “I was not implying that you were involved in this one way or the other,” Sewell said to Shepard.
 
Knochelmann also complimented the publication and said it’s a good investment for the county in distributing its information through it. “It’s generally not a problem unless you have a contentious issue,” Knochelmann said. “It’s a big bang for the buck as long as it’s done well. I think it’s a great investment for the county.”
 
Arlinghaus thanked Shepard for “setting the record straight” and noted that she came to speak on her own and was not asked to do so.
 
“I’m actually kind of glad you brought some things up,” Arlinghaus said. “When I did write the article about CVG, it took me several shots at trying to crack that article, and then when I felt really comfortable, people took a look at it and thought it was fair. I sent it to Andrea and she made quite a few recommended changes.”
 
“All the facts were substantiated,” Arlinghaus said of the final piece, adding that the information was verified through the airport.
 
Written by Michael Monks, editor & publisher of The River City News
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