Running off river industry?

Nowadays, it's not easy locating a barge-oriented business in a population center such as a city. Huntington's experience alone shows that. A different problem along these lines appears to have come up in Cincinnati.

To quote the beginning of a column in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

In the middle of the worst recession since the '30s, a company wants to invest about $25 million and hire 40 people for a project that would make Cincinnati a link in a global transportation network.

They don't want any tax incentives, there's no rezoning needed, and they would use riverfront property that's been gathering weeds for years.

Great deal, right?

Ohio's governor thinks so. So do the Hamilton County commissioners and at least two economic-development groups.

But Cincinnati City Council doesn't think so.

Council members have put up every roadblock they can think of to prevent the Queensgate Terminal project from going through.

Based on scanning the Enquirer's Web site for a few years, either that newspaper has it in for City Hall, or that city really is run by a bunch of people who make the management of the Cincinnati Bengals look good. (That was the worst insult I could come up with off the top of my head. And I'm a guy who's followed the Bengals for years. I hate the 49ers, by the way, almost as much as I hate the Yankees.).