It’s a good thing that Republicans don’t run Cuyahoga County.

But then, how would you know?

Well, you might expect Republicans to feed the rich more generously than Dems, wouldn’t you?

I guess, however, Democrats really act Republican when in office.

I come to that conclusion as I look at the openhandedness of Democrats when it comes to corporate desires here.

Here’s another sickening example of the grand similarity of Democrats and Republicans when it comes to fulfilling corporate interests.  How else can you read it?

In the last 16 years, Cuyahoga County has bestowed more than $100 million upon the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, which recently was renamed “Positively Cleveland.”  The new name goes with the other new slogan –  Cleveland+  – “clever” soubriquets for clueless Cleveland leaders.  And so witty!

Gosh, I feel tingly all over.

$100 million in public funds!

Does anyone want regionalism that produces these results?

$100 million – that’s a lot of tax dollars to promote businesses – hotels, restaurants, sports teams and some retail outlets primarily downtown – that depend upon visitors to increase their take.  It says the task is promoting travel and tourism to Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

The money comes from motel-hotel taxes.  There is no reason, however, that the visitors agency should reap almost all of the receipts.  For example, some funds could go to reduce the County’s costs for the problems of the homeless or other social service needs.

The County Commissioners will be pushing for the health and welfare levy in the next election.  However, the Commissioners – particularly Hagan and Dimora – have jeopardized renewal of the levy by increasing the sales tax by a quarter percent to 7.75% without going to voters.  The some $800 million in increased sales taxes will go for the proposed medical mart and new convention center.

The center and mart will end up another financial drag on the County.  Typically, such facilities operate in red ink.  The County already has financial problems.

What’s really irritating is that the businesses that benefit don’t help themselves.  They have successfully shifted the cost burden to taxpayers, a trend that would be a scandal if there were a watchdog newspaper in town.

Why should business leaders help themselves when they have Hagan, Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones so eager and ready to do it for them with our taxes?

Positively Cleveland’s some 900 business members only contribute annually about $450,000.  Compare that total to the $7 million annually from taxpayers.  Their self-help works out to a measly $500 a year per business for the year.

County tax contributions to Positively Cleveland for 2006 and this year are up.  The amounts totaled $7,479,517 and $7,503,665 respectively, according to County Auditor Frank Russo’s office.

The agency has had a significant increase in funding over the years.  In 1992, it received $4.1 million.  Now the total has risen to $7.5 million, almost double.

Further, the agency has had serious troubles handling the public funds. Why give it so much more money?

The visitors bureau in 2003 dumped its former director $190,000 Dave Nolan after Channel 8’s I-team uncovered extravagant spending by the director and staff.  The reports uncovered lavish spending by staff on meals and sports events.  A trip to the French Riviera cost some $30,000 charged to the bureau.

The scandal of extravagant spending should have spurred continued media surveillance of its spending.  That, however, hasn’t happened and its activities have gone unexamined in the news.

After exposure of bad spending habits, Dennis Roche was made interim director and then crowned director.  He has subsequently ingratiated himself shamelessly to support of the corporate agenda.  He was well rewarded for his actions.

Roche, an accountant by profession, has worked for the County and RTA.  He now pulls down a $279,858 (2005 figure) salary.  He gets an added $31,572 in pension benefits.  How sweet can it get!

“He’s the type of guy who keeps his head when everyone else is losing theirs,” said Dennis Eckart, former chairman of the Growth Association, Congressman, lobbyist and a slick commentator typically promoting the corporate agenda.  Eckart is a regular pundit on Tom Beres' Sunday Morning “Between the Lines” show.  (WKYC Channel 3 fails to inform the audience of Eckert’s clients and other participant’s lobbying ties, which could influence their opinions.  Scene magazine calls Eckart, “Denny the Glib.”)

Roche took a short leave from RTA in 1990, to head the successful Gateway vote on the sin tax and earned corporate brownie points.  He was also an outspoken cheerleader for a new convention center with a medical mart, subsidized by the sales tax, expected to raise $800,000,000.

Roche’s board includes many of the usual suspects – Bruce Akers, retired banker and regional political spokesman; Harlan Diamond, caterer; Joe Roman, head of Greater Cleveland Partnership; Tom Shorgl, arts promoter; and Terry Stewart, director of the Rock Hall.  Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland also sits on the board.

Positively Cleveland represents one of the most egregious examples of the County Commissioners feeding public funds to private interests that should pay their own dues.

It appears that the only non-subsidized interests in the local economy are the County’s working people.  They simply end up paying the bills.

What a shame the Cuyahoga County Commission has become.

The motel-hotel taxes rewarded to Positively Cleveland, according to the auditor’s office, follow:

1992 - $4,111,313

1993 - $4,370,998

1994 - $4,844,339

1995 - $5,573,091

1996 - $6,036,815

1997 - $6,955,744

1998 - $7,025,607

1999 - $7,487,071

2000 - $7,760,190

2001 - $6,981,004

2002 - $6,991,799

2003 - $6,802,428

2004 - $6,400,475

2005 - $6,325,908

2006 - $7,479,517

2007 - $7,503,665

 

“Passion for Justice” Tells History of Legal Aid for Poor

It’s too late for a Christmas gift but local history buffs would appreciate a history of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland by Carol Poh, local historian.  The book is called appropriately “A Passion for Justice” and celebrates 100 years of legal services to those who couldn’t afford it.

Cleveland was early to establish legal services to those who had needs but not resources.  The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland was a pioneer effort in 1905.  Not the first in the nation, but an early effort for social justice.

Poh, a friend, notes that in 1925, Newton D. Baker, president of the Cleveland Bar Association wrote that “the law… would fail to be an equal shield for rich and poor” but for the Society.

Too many Clevelanders don’t seem to know their history and the book gives some insight into the nature of Cleveland’s political culture, which had its progressive streak long before the rise of Dennis Kucinich.

Poh portrays a Cleveland exploding into an “industrial colossus, a magnet for newcomers” to become the sixth largest American city early in the 20th century.  Of course, industrialization brought problems that required answers.

“During this period, public-spirited reformers largely rooted in the urban middle class, began to rebel against Victorian individualism and respond, instead to the message of the social gospel.  They fomented a revolution – a period of political and social reform that would span the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and come to be known as the Progressive Era,” Poh wrote.

As she mentions, Tom Johnson, whose statue resides at Public Square’s southwest quadrant, became known, thanks to Lincoln Steffens, as “as the best mayor of the best governed city” in America during this period.

There are a lot of familiar names of those who toiled to provide legal services to the poor – long-timers such as Joe Meissner, Peter Iskin, and the late Lyonel Jones, long-time director.  Others served and went on to become legal stars – Gerry Gold, a top defense attorney; Burt Griffin, a Common Pleas Judge and an assistant counsel for the Warren Commission; Merle McCurdy, appointed a federal judge by President John Kennedy; and Buddy James who became Cleveland law director under Mayor Carl Stokes.  Others will recognize numerous other Cleveland legal names.

Through the years I remember Lyonel Jones had to make an annual trip to Cleveland City Council for funding purposes.  The softest spoken of men, the diminutive Jones usually encountered a hostile reception, particularly from the barbed Fannie Lewis, because Legal Aid represented people who were sometimes troublesome to Council members in their wards.

Jones, however, always got his money and less static than some wanted to give him.  What many council members didn’t know was that Jones had been a college classmate and friend of Council President George Forbes.  Forbes, who is from Memphis, I’m told, spent time with the Jones family.  Both attended Baldwin-Wallace College.

One gets a flavor of the times through the century and the understanding that some problems are ubiquitous.  An early-1900s report by the agency’s single lawyer reports that among the cases were...

“Here an installment house foreclosure was held off,” and another, “Here the Society found out for a consumptive girl that she was not liable to deportation under the Immigration Laws.”

Problems of the poor never seem to go away.

Statistics from the past are always interesting.  The 1912 report on the nationalities of clients held surprises for me.  Four were Finnish, four were Swiss and three Danes of the 1,533 served.  Cleveland certainly was a melting pot.

The 1960s and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society provided federal funding for legal services that could never be matched by private charity.  Services expanded from common legal problems to even class-action suits as Legal Aid lawyers looked at solving problems that effected classes of the poor, not simply individual cases.

The camaraderie of legal activists at Legal Aid was described as a “MASH unit, and a lawyer had to learn – and learn quickly.”

Legal Aid ran into funding troubles as the Reagan era ushered in a time of resentment toward social spending.  President Ronald Reagan opposed and tried to shut down the programs that offered aid to those on the lower economic scale.  So cutbacks were necessary and “emotionally difficult,” as Jones described it.

“A Passion for Justice” portrays 100 years in the life of a Cleveland institution and its participants.