Toledo City Councilman Tyrone Riley stands accused, in a Toledo police report, of skipping out on a $68 bar bill and claiming he was entitled to do so because he is a member of council.
Owners Mohamed and Akram Mahmoud called him out.
RELATED: Toledo Councilman Tyrone Riley accused of dine-and-dash
According to the report, Mr. Riley sat at a table with a group of people at Andy’s Sports Bar and Jojo’s Pizza and then left without paying the bill, claiming that he had an arrangement with a previous owner. The Mahmoud brothers bought the eatery in January.
Security footage shows Mr. Riley holding up his phone to the brothers, reportedly as an offer to call the former owner to verify the arrangement. He claimed he would run up a tab and then pay it on some future date, perhaps like Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy, who ran up an existential tab for hamburgers.
The footage also shows a heated exchange between the new owners (who claim Mr. Riley had invoked this option before) and Mr. Riley.
And it shows something else: entitlement — an expectation of privilege on the part of the councilman.
The best part is that, after leaving, Mr. Riley returned to the restaurant to argue with the owners about whether he had “offered to pay” the bill, as if paying a bill for something you consumed or acquired is optional.
For most of us, in most of the world, it is not.
“Offering to pay,” after first declining to pay, is a unique approach, perhaps one that would be popular in jails and prisons throughout the land.
But perhaps only a politician would consider himself virtuous for “offering to pay” for what he has already taken.
Council President Matt Cherry made a strong statement, saying that members of council should meet higher ethical standards than what we saw in this incident. And, to his great credit, Mr. Riley has agreed and has apologized.
It turns out that council is given an ethics training session each March by the Ohio Ethics Commission. The commission should be asked to provide a refresher.
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In recent months we have seen a member of council engage in a choking incident outside a bar and another council member found out cold in a saloon parking lot. (He said a mysterious stranger, possibly a one-armed man, banged him over the head.)
Maybe the answer for members of Toledo City Council is: Do your drinking at home.
First Published July 15, 2018, 9:00 p.m.
