NEWS

Health experts from Cincinnati’s hospitals brief media March 12 about COVID-19 preparations PHOTO: NICK SWARTSELL

Are Cincinnati’s Hospitals and Other Key Systems Ready for COVID-19? Health officials and elected leaders say the new virus will cause a wave of sick people to miss work and seek medical treatment. Here is how they are preparing. BY NICK SWARTSELL

Ohio’s top health official says as many as 100,000 people may have an undiagnosed case of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 — a figure that could put strain on a number of the state’s vital systems soon.

As Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton made that stunning announcement on March 12, executives and physicians from five area hospital systems said they’ve been working to prepare for the outbreak that is likely coming to Greater Cincinnati. CEOs from Bon Secours Mercy Health, UC Health, TriHealth, The Christ Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital spoke on their efforts through a collective group called the Health Collaborative to make sure the area’s medical systems have enough capacity to handle those who may get the sickest from the virus. Mayor John Cranley and Hamilton County Commission President Denise Driehaus were also at the briefing. The group of local health leaders and medical experts faced some tough questions about what is to come. But they say they’re working together and preparing for a coming surge in demand, especially if Greater Cincinnati residents take proper steps to keep from getting the virus and avoid going to the hospital if they don’t need urgent, life-saving care.

Hospitals aren’t the only ones taking extraordinary measures: On March 15, shortly after Ohio confirmed its 37th case of COVID-19, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine ordered all restaurants and bars cease dine-in service for an indeterminate amount of time. He said the move could save many lives.

“If we don’t take these actions now, it will be too late,” DeWine said at a March 15 briefing. “This is a matter of life and death. We’re very mindful of the economic hurt for individuals who will lose their jobs. Look, this is brutally tough. And my heart goes out to them. But we have to do what we have to do to save their lives. And not just their lives but the lives of others.”

The closures come with an executive order from the governor extending unemployment benefits for displaced workers, as well as potential federal loans to small businesses.

What is COVID-19? COVID-19 is a new variant of coronavirus that emerged late last year around Wuhan, China. The U.S. had seen roughly 3,200 cases and 60 deaths so far at press time. (This number is always being updated and you can find the most recent information on the CDC website at cdc.gov.)

Most cases of the virus — about eight in 10 — are mild enough they won’t require hospitalization, especially among the young and healthy. Others will be moderate cases, but about 5 percent will be serious.

“I recognize that this is a significant health challenge for our communities,” UC Health CEO Dr. Rick Lofgren said. “What I want to say is that we’re prepared. This is a community that has had to take time to think well in advance in cases like this about how we would respond. I have great confidence in the fact that we’ve been working among all the health systems to make sure we’re prepared.”

Ohio Department of Health Director Acton said at a news conference in Columbus that, due to signs of socalled “community spread” of the virus presented in some of Ohio’s cases, 1 percent of the state’s population — more than 100,000 people — could have the disease but be undiagnosed. Acton also said 40 percent or more of Ohio’s population could end up contracting the virus over time. If the percentage of serious cases holds in

that scenario, there could be as many as 14 patients needing hospitalization for each hospital bed in the state.

“This is certainly an unprecedented time,” she said. “It is this one in 50 years pandemic that we have been planning for that we talk a lot about in my over 30 years in public health. We have never seen a situation exactly like this.”

There are some things individuals can do to prevent stressing hospitals, of course — washing your hands often, keeping a distance of at least six feet from other people whenever possible, avoiding large gatherings and staying home if you feel sick. But even then, it seems likely a wave of COVID-19 cases is coming to Greater Cincinnati.

Is There Enough Capacity? The potential surge of patients to come is the crucial test, experts say. That surge has overwhelmed hospital capacity in other countries, including Iran and Italy, the latter of which has seen more than 15,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths.

One point of worry nationally is that the U.S. has fewer hospital beds per capita — roughly 2.8 per 1,000 people — than Italy’s 3.2 beds. Some estimates suggest COVID-19 could cause millions of hospital visits here.

Local health care leaders say there is a shared network that assesses on a daily basis the number of empty beds as well as other resources like ventilators — the Health Collaborative has about an extra 100 of those right now. In addition, hospitals are reassessing their staff rotations to make sure there are enough health care workers to go around.

Dr. Dustin Calhoun of UC Health says area hospitals collaborate at least once a year on a test of extra capacity. The last test, performed earlier this year, found that hospitals had between 20 percent to 50 percent extra capacity each.

The exact number of extra hospital beds that represents is complicated, he says, because personnel must also be considered, and some beds best serve specific purposes. But generally, hospitals in the area have in the “high three digits or low four digits” of extra beds collectively.

That doesn’t include other locations that could be used to house and care for less-severe cases, including a large, tent-based triage site the Health Collaborative could set up in an emergency. The main challenge, local medical leaders say, is reserving that extra space for those who are truly sick while helping people with less-severe cases care for themselves.

“Eighty percent will have a simple cold,” Calhoun says of those who contract COVID-19. “The important thing is that we manage to maintain the functionality of our health care system during that so that the sicker amongst us can get the care that they need, and so that those who are affected by medical conditions that they deal with every day…can get the health care that they need in a system that isn’t overwhelmed with people who don’t Rendering of the COVID-19 virus PHOTO: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

necessarily have to be in the middle of other patients.”

TriHealth CEO Mark Clement says that comes down to communicating with patients and making sure they don’t panic.

“We’re actively communicating with more than 500,000 members of our community to advise them on what to do if they’re exhibiting symptoms,” he said. “What we’re advising them is don’t present to one of our emergency departments or urgent care facilities or primary care practices. Rather, call your physician or our call center and we will provide direction on how to be assessed in a way that ensures your safety and minimizes the spread of this disease.”

How Will People Be Tested for The Virus? Part of the strategy is making sure a greater level of testing is accomplished without intake into the traditional medical system. To that end, multiple hospitals are working on temporary sites to assess patients’ conditions and administer COVID-19 tests. Medical leaders agreed that testing capacity so far has been less-than-ideal, but that changed this week as private companies came online with tests for the virus. TriHealth plans to have testing centers at its hospital campuses. Those facilities will be separate from other hospital functions and will require a physician referral.

Christ Hospital will open a testing site at a location to be determined. That site will test for COVID-19 but will require a physician referral for patients experiencing symptoms that may be from the virus.

Those testing facilities — as well as ramped-up testing at other sites — will add a new dimension to our understanding of the virus’ likely presence in the area.

COVID-19 Is Coming — Or May Already Be Here As of press time, four cases were confirmed in West Chester and 37 throughout Ohio, but hospital leaders say it’s just a matter of time before more are diagnosed.

Part of the lack of cases may come from strict limitations on testing brought about by lack of supplies. Ohio currently has the capacity to test about 1,000 people, and in early March, that number was much lower.

One local woman who self-quarantined after a family member visited two cities in Kentucky with confirmed cases found it difficult to get a test, despite the fact she was exhibiting symptoms. The woman’s employer, Cincinnati Public school the Academy of World Languages, closed for two days due to her status and deep-cleaned the school. As cases come to light, Bon Secours Mercy Health’s Dr. Steve Feagins said cooperation among hospitals will be the biggest part of addressing the upcoming challenge.

“The coordination of care is key,” he said. “We’re ready to know who is coming where and when they’re coming so we can prepare for them and so we can have protocol in place to care for them.”

of a larger picture, Mayor Cranley acknowledged at the briefing. He said new measures are being assessed daily to slow the spread of the virus, including the cancellation of many public gatherings, a three-week shutdown of Cincinnati Public Schools that started March 17 and other efforts.

Cranley also said the city will work to enforce DeWine’s order shuttering dine-in service at local bars and restaurants.

“This isn’t about stopping work, it’s about working differently,” Cranley said. Workplace closures and business slow-downs could be “devastating” for the local economy, the mayor said.

DeWine’s executive order expanding unemployment benefits will allow displaced workers to begin receiving them without the usual one-week waiting period. Workers who have been quarantined will not have to show proof they are seeking work.

Ohio has also applied for federal loans that could go to small businesses — up to $2 million per business — to help with debt payments, payroll and other expenses.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati officials were gearing up for big changes. Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said March 15 that those calling CPD should be prepared to meet officers outside their homes whenever possible, and that some non-emergency calls might not get immediate response.

Preserving the city’s capacity for basic services could mean a slow down on some city functions, Cranley said, including police and fire response.

“It’s going to be difficult for all of us,” he said.

By now, you’ve likely heard a million things about COVID-19 — a new virus that started in Wuhan, China late last year and has swept across the globe since. The virus has been confirmed in more than 170,000 people across the globe and killed more than 6,500 at a minimum, the World Health Organization reported March 15.

At press time, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had called for an end to dine-in service at restaurants and bars after health officials confirmed at least 37 cases of the virus in Ohio, including four in Butler County.

Ohio Health Department Director Amy Acton estimates more than 100,000 people in the state could have and be undiagnosed. (For the most recent numbers, visit coronavirus.ohio. gov.) At this point, there have been no confirmed cases in Hamilton County — but experts say that will very likely change soon.

That has triggered the cancellation of a number of beloved Cincinnati traditions, including the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade, the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and other large gatherings. More cancellations or suspensions are likely. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley on March 11 declared a state of emergency, which makes it easier for the city to cancel other events, restrict travel and take other measures to slow the spread of the virus.

With no confirmed cases in Hamilton County at the time, some are asking — why cancel everything? The answer is that a big surge of COVID-19 could very well be coming.

Those cancellations and personal behaviors like washing your hands, avoiding close proximity to others and staying home if you’re feeling sick are important not because they will necessarily outright stop the spread of the disease, experts say, but because they could slow it down when it arrives in Hamilton County.

That could keep its spread from overwhelming hospitals, making large parts of the workforce sick all at once and endangering very vulnerable parts of the population.

If you’re young and healthy, you will most likely not get very sick from the virus, at least going by how it has

behaved so far. But robust preventative measures will protect those for whom the individual stakes are much higher. Coronaviruses are a broad category of virus that cause the common cold, among other illnesses. COVID-19 is what scientists call a new, or “novel,” form of the virus — one for which humans haven’t developed antibodies and one which epidemiologists do not yet know how to combat.

UC Health’s Dr. Dustin J. Calhoun told attendees at a March 10 city summit that 80 percent of people infected will experience a mild cold. The majority who experience more severe symptoms will also recover. At this early stage, pregnant women and children seem to be less vulnerable, Calhoun said.

Those most at risk are the elderly — mortality rates for those above 70 shoot up to 8 percent or higher, some studies suggest, while those under 40 have an estimated mortality rate of about .2 Crowds at the 2019 Cincinnati Reds Opening Day celebration PHOTO: RON VALLE

CONTINUES ON PAGE 09

The Cincinnati Health Department Wants to Bridge a 25-Year Life Expectancy Gap BY NICK SWARTSELL

The average person in Cincinnati

lives to be more than 76 years old. But there are some big differences in how that number actually shakes out depending on where in the city you live. And, troublingly, the city’s life expectancy has dropped slightly in the last decade. In Lower Price Hill, the average life expectancy is 63 years — the lowest in the city and 25 years shorter than in Mount Adams, the neighborhood just a couple of miles away with the highest life expectancy at 88 years. That isn’t the only place where big disparities exist. In Avondale, one of the city’s largest predominantly African-American neighborhoods, life expectancy is just 69 years. Next door, in predominantly white Clifton, it’s almost 81 years. There are complex reasons for that

huge gap — economics, environmental factors, racial segregation, access to fresh food and other issues. “These gaps can mean people in one neighborhood live 20 to 30 years longer than those just a couple blocks away — and the inequalities are prevalent in neighborhoods with high levels of racial and ethnic segregation,” Cincinnati Health Commissioner Dr. Melba R. Moore says. CityBeat explored many of those issues in a 2015 deep dive on the city’s socioeconomic segregation. That investigation found that of the city’s 10 neighborhoods with the lowest median household incomes, nine are more than 70-percent black. Six of those neighborhoods with considerable populations — The Villages at Roll Hill, Winton Hills, West End, Millvale, South Cumminsville and Avondale — are more than 90-percent black. Each of these neighborhoods has a median household income around half, or less, than the city’s median of about $34,000 a year. In these places, life expectancies are five to 10 years lower than in the city as a whole. Meanwhile, the 10 wealthiest Cincinnati neighborhoods by median household income are the demographic flipside. Mount Lookout, Columbia Tusculum, Mount Adams, Hyde Park, California, Mount Washington and Sayler Park, for instance, are all more than 90-percent white and have median household incomes between $48,000 and $115,000 a year. Moore says factors including obesity, smoking and lack of exercise also play a role. But systemic issues are a big part of the problem. “The inequality in health in the United States — a country that spends more on health care than any other — is unacceptable,” she says. “Every American, regardless of where they live or their background, deserves to live a long and healthy life. If we allow trends to continue as they are, the gap will only widen between neighborhoods.” The Cincinnati Health Department has been holding community information sessions about the data it has collected around life expectancy in the city. It held one Feb. 29 at Westwood Town Hall, another March 4 at the College Hill Recreation Center and a third March 9 at the Hirsch Recreation Center in Avondale. Another session was planned in Madisonville March 12 at the Madisonville Recreation Center, but that session was postponed. Madisonville experienced the largest drop in life expectancy of any Cincinnati neighborhood measured. A previous analysis of data between 2001 and 2009 showed that Madisonville had an average life expectancy of 83 years. The newer analysis, done on data between 2007 and 2015, shows that life expectancy there dipped 11 years to 72 years on average. It wasn’t the only neighborhood to lose ground. Overall, the city’s average life expectancy ticked down slightly, from 76.7 years to 76.1 years — three years less than the national average. Some neighborhoods did increase, though. The East End, for example, had the largest rise in life expectancy, going from 73 years to 76 years on average. Addressing the issues that cause residents of some Cincinnati neighborhoods to live shorter lives than their fellow city dwellers just a couple miles away will be complicated, health officials say, and will likely take a huge collaborative effort. “There are a lot of moving parts, and the fact that it’s so expansive and involves so many factors and causes of death, means we need to examine root causes and possible contributing trends to the change,” Cincinnati Health Department Supervising Epidemiologist Dr. Maryse Amin says. “We want to utilize this data to guide

the health of the community and lead to a call to action.” Amin points to the city’s Community Health Improvement Plan, a strategy to push toward better health outcomes in the city’s lower-income neighborhoods. The 2020 plan was released in February. It focuses on four priorities: behavioral and mental health, food and nutrition access, infant mortality and access to health care. “This plan is a long-term, systematic effort to address public health problems based on the results of community health assessment activities and the community health improvement process,” he says.

Cincinnati City Council is back up to nine members.

Council member P.G. Sittenfeld March 11 announced Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney as his pick to replace Tamaya Dennard, who resigned March 2 after she was arraigned on federal bribery and extortion charges.

At a news conference in Avondale, Sittenfeld announced he had selected the Cincinnati Heraldpublisher for the temporary role, which runs until Dec. 31, 2021. Kearney will likely be sworn in at council’s March 18 meeting.

Kearney owns the 65-year-old newspaper focused on the black community with her husband, former state senator and African American Chamber of Commerce President Eric Kearney.

Council appointee Kearney grew up in Avondale, attended Walnut Hills High School, Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. She got a job at local law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister after returning to Cincinnati. She, her husband and other partners started a publishing company called Sesh Media, which purchased The Cincinnati Herald in 1996.

“I learned the values that I have from Avondale,” Kearney said at the announcement. “The three that are most important to me are hard work, service and tenacity.”

Kearney said that tenacity served her well during a fight with breast cancer, that hard work has been a lesson passed down from her father, physician Dr. Luther Lemon, and that public service is something those around her have encouraged her to pursue.

During the event, Kearney directly addressed some turbulence The Herald experienced when the paper fell short of payment of payroll taxes to the IRS. “The Herald went through two recessions,” she said. “We had cashflow problems. We talked to the IRS. We made a plan.”

The tax debt was paid off in 2015, she said.

Kearney has said she will step aside as publisher of The Herald if she is appointed to council.

The new appointment comes after almost unprecedented turbulence at City Hall — much of it not completely settled yet.

Dennard is charged with accepting $15,000 from an attorney representing a developer — Tom Gabelman, who represents Hamilton County on The Banks riverfront development project — in exchange for votes in favor of the county. An FBI affidavit alleges Dennard discussed that exchange in text messages and recorded conversations. Dennard has maintained her innocence and says she will fight the charges, but stepped down as she does so.

Cincinnati’s charter requires council members to pick one of their colleagues to appoint their replacement, and Dennard, a former Sittenfeld aid and campaign staffer, chose him.

Kearney won’t be the only new council member at City Hall. Earlier this month, council approved the appointment of Betsy Sundermann, a Hamilton County Probate Court magistrate, to replace fellow Republican Amy Murray. Murray left council to take a job in the Department of Defense for the Trump administration.

Legislation Seeking to End Ohio’s Death Penalty Coming to State Senate BY NICK SWARTSELL

A bipartisan group of state senators is sponsoring legislation seeking to end Ohio’s death penalty, supporters announced at a news conference earlier this month. State Sens. Nickie J. Antonio, a Democrat, and Peggy Lehner, a Republican, are joint sponsors of the legislation. Republican State Sen. Kristina Roegner will be a co-sponsor. Antonio says she and others have been working for almost a decade to abolish the death penalty in the state. “It’s time for the state of Ohio to

take the compassionate, pragmatic and economically prudent step to abolish the death penalty, which has been found to be expensive, impractical, unjust, inhumane and frankly, often erroneous,” Antonio said at a March 3 news conference. “It’s a punishment that has been shown to be administered with disparities across economic and racial lines, as well as failing to be a deterrent to violent crime.” Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, supports the measure. He said disparities he saw during his time as governor have stuck with him. “It’s final,” Strickland said. “You can’t correct a mistake. I am convinced that if we continue to impose this penalty, we will at some point, at some place, at some time take the life of an innocent person. Our criminal justice system is not perfect. That means we should never impose this penalty on one of our fellow human beings.” Roegner, a conservative, says she was “out of her comfort zone,” but that her faith has changed her position on the issue of capital punishment. Though she stressed those convicted of crimes like murder should be punished, she said her pro-life beliefs mean she can no longer support executions. “When I came to the General Assembly, I was for the death penalty,” she said. “I supported capital punishment. I believed that if you committed a heinous crime and were guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt, you deserve to die. But here I am…it was my heart that changed. We are all sinners and we all fall short of the glory of God and we all are in need of redemption.” Other conservatives, including a new group calling itself Ohio Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, have also spoken up about capital punishment. Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice & Policy Center also supports the legislation. The group’s policy director, Kevin Werner, pointed out data he said show flaws in the system. Death penalty cases cost taxpayers 10 times the amount non-capital cases cost, he said at the news conference. Most convicted of capital crimes have long experiences with trauma, poverty abuse and addiction. Werner said nine inmates on death row have been exonerated after spending a collective 200 years in prison. “I doubt that those nine individuals are a full accounting of people who we have wrongfully convicted and sent to death,” Werner said. Antonio says she’s working with House Republicans and Democrats on companion legislation in that body. The legislation comes as state elected officials find themselves at an impasse as it relates to the death penalty — and as some Republicans in the Ohio House express openness to at least considering repealing the punishment. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced in late January that the state will delay three more executions originally set for this year — yet another set of reprieves as the state searches for a solution to problems with its lethal injection execution methods. DeWine’s office acknowledged that difficulty obtaining a controversial execution drug contributed to the reprieves. In October last year, DeWine delayed two other executions. Ohio still has two-dozen executions scheduled through 2024 — though there is no clear path forward for carrying them out as of now. Six years ago, Ohio prison employees injected convicted killer Dennis McGuire with a two-drug cocktail that was supposed to end his life quickly and painlessly. It took 26 minutes for the mixture of hydromorphone and midazolam to kill McGuire — the longest execution since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999 — and witnesses reported the condemned man loudly gasping for air. The incident sparked court challenges claiming the drug cocktail constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution and eventually led the state to issue a moratorium on executions until it could find a new cocktail of lethal drugs that is more humane. But the choice it settled on — which still contains the controversial drug midazolam — is now being questioned. Midazolam can cause sensations similar to drowning, triggering an inmate’s lungs to fill with fluid, a federal judge in Dayton pointed out earlier this year while expressing concerns the execution method could be unconstitutional. Ohio officials are unable to secure the drugs necessary to put inmates to death via lethal injection, DeWine announced last August, and must cease using them or risk being unable to buy the drugs for other purposes. Companies that sell the drugs have balked at the state using them for executions without telling them they were doing so and have threatened to cut off all sales to Ohio if executions using the substances continue. That could impact entities such as the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the Department of Youth Services, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and others. As the state struggles to find drugs for lethal executions, Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives are discussing an end to the state’s death penalty laws, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder said late last year. “We have been talking about, you know, is there support today to get rid of the death penalty or not,” Householder told media outlets at the capital in December. “We’ve been having those discussions.”

percent so far.

The takeaway — if you’re healthy and under the age of 60, you shouldn’t be too panicked about getting sick. But you should be very worried about the collective impact COVID-19 could have here.

The slower the virus spreads, the easier it will be to keep truly vulnerable people — those over the age of 60 or with chronic health problems — from catching it, and the more likely they’ll be able to receive full-capacity, lifesaving care at a hospital if they do.

In other places like China, Iran and Italy, where the entire country has been on a near-total lockdown, the number of cases of COVID-19 began doubling every six days shortly after it was detected. That exponential growth is how viruses operate — hence the term “going viral.”

That incredibly rapid spread has caused all kinds of problems, even though not everyone gets very sick from the virus.

Ohio is still in the early stages of the virus’ spread here. But there are troubling signs it could intensify soon.

The state’s first three confirmed cases were in Cuyahoga County. Two of the folks infected there had been to a conference with someone with a confirmed case in Washington, D.C. The third came back from a cruise where other cases were confirmed.

The fourth case confirmed in the state, however, was a man in Stark County who had not traveled any place with the virus or come in contact with someone confirmed to have COVID-19. That’s what epidemiologists call “community spread” — a sign that transmission of the disease is picking up its pace. Ohio Department of Health Director Acton called that case “a game changer.” Local officials aren’t taking chances. Cincinnati Public School the Academy of World Languages was closed for two days after a staff member there selfquarantined because they were experiencing symptoms of illness. Janitorial staff worked to deep-clean the school’s Evanston building while it was closed. CPS subsequently curtailed inperson instruction at the district until at least April 3 — something the area’s universities have also done per instructions from Ohio Gov. DeWine.

Expect the closures and suspensions to keep coming. Major League Soccer announced it was suspending its 2020 season for 30 days — just two days before FC Cincinnati’s home opener. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County announced it would close for an indefinite period of time on March 13.

City officials, too, are mulling bigger moves, with the aim of being safer now rather than sorry later.

“We’re going to take actions in next few days, next few weeks, hopefully not next few months that we hope people look back and say we were too reactionary,” Cincinnati City Manager Patrick Duhaney said at the announcement of the city’s state of emergency March 11.

Former Cincinnati City Council Member Tamaya Dennard Indicted by Grand Jury BY NICK SWARTSELL

A federal grand jury indicted former Cincinnati City Council member Tamaya Dennard on wire fraud, bribery and attempted extortion charges, U.S. attorneys announced March 11. Dennard has denied wrongdoing and her attorneys say she will fight the charges. She pleaded not guilty to the charges March 16.

The grand jury approved charges that are identical to those on which Dennard was arraigned on Feb. 25, after federal agents arrested her outside a downtown Starbucks. She subsequently resigned from council March 4.

An affidavit by an FBI agent alleges that between August and December last year, Dennard solicited $15,000 from an unnamed source — later revealed to be Frost Brown Todd attorney Tom Gabelman, who represents Hamilton County on The Banks development on Cincinnati’s riverfront.

The city and county were locked in a complex battle over a land swap seen as necessary at the time to clear the way for a music venue at the development.

Dennard allegedly asked Gabelman for a $10,000 payment and subsequent $5,000 payment in exchange for two votes in favor of the land swap, which would have benefited the county.

Dennard voted in favor of the deal, though it did not pass council. The affidavit says Gabelman declined Dennard’s request and went to federal officials.

They encouraged him to keep text messages from Dennard and record conversations about the exchange. Gabelman allegedly provided Dennard with the money on the advice of the FBI.

The three counts of wire fraud carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The two counts of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds could result in another 10 years, while the attempted extortion charges could carry up to 20 years.

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