O.k., the plot thickens, this should be interesting to find out. I'll go browse the bug tracker
EDIT: This is a new post, 7 hours later, merged automatically as duplicate. So I think it will not generate a notification!!
Amy, not sure if this helps, but I was unable to duplicate your problem with removebans.php I added a couple of numbered:
log_cron_action(' test 1 ', $nextitem);
statements and they showed up in the cron log through the cron method.
I still think there's something weird with crons, but removebans didn't help narrow it for me