Cincinnati's Code

STATES & CITIES

In Cincinnati three weeks ago pious citizens, as an evangelical stunt, spent 16 hr., 40 min. spelling each other through a continuous reading-aloud of the entire New Testament (TIME, March 27). Last week Cincinnati's City Council listened to a like reading of all 659 pages of the city's ordinances.

The councilmen's action was not prompted by civic piety or pride in their own handiwork. A woman had protested her sewer assessment because the ordinance authorizing it had been advertised, not in a daily newspaper as required by the city charter, but in the city's own weekly City Bulletin. Last week Ohio's Supreme Court upheld her. The ruling invalidated only the sewer ordinance, but Cincinnati's entire General Code had been enacted in 1928 and the City Solicitor foresaw other protests.

Chief Council Clerk Louis B. Blakemore, with assistants waiting to spell him, began to read at 3:30 p. m. On & on he droned. Bored councilmen drifted in & out. When they gathered to vote at 11 p. m. the reading was still going on. Not until 12:15 a. m. were Cincinnati's ordinances finally secure.

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