Five Cincinnati City Council members are admitting they broke the law by holding secret text conversations about city business – and Councilman Wendell Young is admitting he destroyed records.

That's revealed in a draft settlement set to be approved by a judge Thursday. The draft was obtained via an Enquirer public records request.

The city will pay $101,000 to settle a lawsuit brought over a series of texts between five council members – a majority of the nine-member government body – in which they discussed public business, including the fate of then-City Manager Harry Black. Those five were Young, Tamaya Dennard, Chris Seelbach, P.G. Sittenfeld and Greg Landsman,

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The settlement includes $90,000 in attorney's fees to the Finney Law Firm, which brought the suit.

Young could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The $10,000 for destroying records and $1,000 for violating the law will go to citizen Mark Miller, who hired the Finney Law Firm. Miller is the treasurer for the anti-tax group the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST).

The settlement also requires council members to release the texts and emails between themselves for a ten-month period and forbids council members from having further text exchanges that involved a majority of council members.

The lengthy text exchange related to Black's employment will be entered in the council record as official minutes of the meeting.

"...We have proven every allegation in the complaint and achieved our goal of transparency," said Brian Shrive, the Finney Law Firm lawyer who represented Miller.

A hearing to officially settle the case is set for Thursday. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman has called the five members of council involved in the case to appear at the hearing.

Two text conversations between the five have already been shared with the public, showing the group conducted city business via text message in the midst of last year's City Hall battle over whether Black should be fired. He eventually resigned.

The judge has said several times he believes the texts are public, and he indicated last week his mind hasn't changed.

The case dates back to a power struggle between Black and Mayor John Cranley, a tumultuous time early last year that spurred Cranley to asked for Black's resignation. He refused, setting off a six-week battle. These five council members worked behind the scenes to keep Black, while four others wanted to allow Black to leave with severance in hopes of ending the ugly battle between the city's top officials.

The group drafted a news release about their desire to keep Black in the job after discussing the matter privately in text messages among themselves. City law requires all council business to be conducted in public.

The news release caught the attention of Mark Miller, the treasurer of COAST.

Miller, as a citizen, sued the five members for holding "rogue" meetings. In response to the lawsuit, city lawyers released the text messages related to Black's employment, agreeing that the conversation constituted a public meeting.

COAST took no official position in the case.

When some texts were made public, they confirmed the five council members had discussed city business, including Black's job.

The Enquirer sought the text messages and others in a public records request and has asked the Ohio Court of Claims to make a determination that the texts between the five council members be made public.

Judge Ruehlman has previously said the texts should be released as part of the discovery process, while the city has opposed publicly releasing all of the texts.

Young deleted text messages from his phone after the judge said they should be made public, in possible violation of a court order. Young's attorney, Scott Croswell III, said Tuesday the texts have been retrieved and he does not expect Young to face charges.