The Cincinnati Southern Railway is the last municipally owned interstate railroad in the US. Despite being a consistent moneymaker, the city may soon sell it to the private corporation responsible for the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this year.

The fate of the last municipally owned interstate railroad in the United States will be decided by voters in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 7. At stake is the 336-mile Cincinnati Southern Railway, which runs from Cincinnati to Chattanooga and earns the city approximately $25 million annually. The city has tentatively accepted an offer of $1.6 billion from none other than Norfolk Southern (NS), its current lessee, which has been cited for fifty-eight violations of various federal and state environmental laws after their freight derailment in East Palestine created an environmental disaster in February.

In the short time between the July 13 tentative agreement and the beginning of early voting on October 11, a local nonpartisan opposition group, Derail the Sale, has formed. Working in close collaboration with Railroad Workers United and River Valley Organizing, these activists have organized multiple teach-ins to raise awareness of the issue and urge their neighbors to vote no on Issue 22.

Because the vote shares an off-year ballot with major measures around reproductive justice and recreational marijuana, Dylan Bauer, an activist with Derail the Sale, thought that city officials “expected this to be a minor issue,” and they were “ready to coast on not putting too much information out to voters.” But the potential sale is shaping up to be quite contentious.

The Propaganda Push

Following the announcement of the deal, Todd Zinser of Citizens for a Transparent Railroad Vote wrote letters to the administration, recommending they host citywide forums and hearings, as they have done for other issues, and that they dedicate a website where various parties could post their positions on the sale. He has also recommended that the city push back the vote to the primary or general election: “If we don’t have the information that we need to make a righteous decision, we’ll have to vote no.”

Ironically, even those in support of the sale have echoed the sentiment that voters aren’t well enough informed on the issue. Cincinnati’s vice mayor, Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney, told WLWT5 that while she doesn’t agree with Derail the Sale’s position, she is glad “they are at least getting the word out and letting people know about it so that everybody pays attention.”

This isn’t to say that proponents of the sale have been sitting idly by as the vote nears. Building Cincinnati’s Future — a PAC formed and funded, at least in part, by Norfolk Southern — has peppered voters with alarming TV ads and mailers, their selling points an eerie distillation of well-worn neoliberal tropes: “Cincinnati has a $400 million backlog in needed maintenance to our infrastructure. By selling the railway, we’ll upgrade our infrastructure and create thousands of jobs —without raising taxes.”

Jens Sutmoller, a spokesperson for the PAC, recently told WVXU that it hopes to accept donations from entities and individuals other than Norfolk Southern, but declined to comment on the company’s current contribution. Another PAC representative, Ashley Harp, said that information about the PAC, its donors, and its expenses will be released in late October — not until early voting is well underway.

Read more at The Guardian.