Lose Excess Wallet Weight!

"The county did not have any appraisals completed for this property," Jay Ross, the county's director of central services, wrote in an e-mail.

In a recent ruling for the 2000 tax year, the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals had valued it at $13.5 million. But that didn't include the neighboring parking garage. So the county rounded up to $21.8 million (always leave a tip!) and called it even. It went to a good cause, after all: multimillionaire Dick Jacobs.

4. There Is No Such Thing as Too Many Consultants
Now that they were embarking on a huge project, the commissioners decided they needed someone else to run the show.

Robert P. Madison International signed a $13.2 million contract for architectural design.

R.P. Carbone Construction and Gilbane Building, the construction management team, got $10 million.

More than $8 million more went to Stephen Sebesta and Associates and Precision Environmental to do the asbestos removal.

These companies were supposed to make sure the wrecking ball hit the right buildings. And while two years passed without anything actually being built, they kept drawing checks just the same.

After all, it's only tax money, people!

5. Hire the Guy Who's Under Indictment
About a year after the project began, Vincent Carbone, president of R.P. Carbone, was indicted for allegedly bribing Elyria businessman Larry Jones to get work on Lorain's Justice Center. He pleaded not guilty and has yet to stand trial.

In most cities, having an indicted guy overseeing your largest civic project would be considered bad publicity. But Jimmy Dimora never lets money stand in the way of friendship, especially when the money isn't his. When the news broke, Dimora mounted a defense that would make Romeo Crennel proud, telling The Plain Dealer that Carbone and his company had "impeccable reputations" and "the allegations shocked him."

Adds Jones: "We had approved the contract prior to the indictment. There's not much you can do there."

Actually, there is. The commissioners wiggle out of contracts all the time (see Step 8). But let's not quibble over details, people. We still have money to burn.

6. Hire Contractors Known for Screwing Black Workers, Then Act Surprised When They Screw Black Workers
As Carbone awaited trial, another contractor in Independence, Precision Environmental, was having troubles of its own.

All county projects require that a portion of the contracts go to minority-owned companies. They're not quotas — "small-business enterprise" is the preferred term — but the goal is the same: To create jobs for black workers.

And when you're building a headquarters you don't actually need, the whole job creation thing is a major selling point. That's how you get voters to believe they may get a paycheck out of it.

But in February, the county encountered what is known on the Sci Fi Channel as a peculiar phenomenon: The black contractor on the asbestos-removal job, Lawrence Harris Construction, had the same people on its payroll as Precision, the white contractor.

Alas, identical payrolls are generally a tip-off that the black company is simply getting paid to be a front, while the white company is doing all the work and taking in most of the money. This scam is practically a rule for winning a city or county project.

But the discovery allowed Adrian Maldonado, the county's director of procurement and diversity, to assume the role of Totally Outraged Official. He ordered Harris to hire a more "diversified" workforce, then claimed that the company cleaned up its act within a week.

"We're gonna send a message to every contractor," Maldonado declared. "We cannot have those kinds of games that were played elsewhere here."

Yet one had to wonder why Maldonado was surprised. The feds had already caught Precision doing the same thing at NASA Glenn in the late '90s, when it hired Choice Construction as a front. Fortunately, none of this stopped Precision from getting additional government work.

Just a few months after Maldonado's crackdown, the commissioners awarded Precision yet another contract — though its bid was nearly $1 million more than the competitor's.

After all, when your goal is to lose unwanted money, it's always wise to hire people who will take it in costly and creative new ways.

7. Is That Something Shiny Over There?
Two years into the project, the county had made very little progress toward actually building anything. By this fall, the asbestos removal wasn't finished, and the tower was still standing. Meanwhile, the price tag had ballooned to $223 million, according to The Plain Dealer.

And that's when our heroes got distracted by some bright, shiny objects.

Remember that new convention center the commissioners had wanted to build? There was just one problem: Voters thought this was a really dumb idea.

Then some guys from Chicago came calling with plans for a new medical mart, which would showcase products for the health-care industry. But they wouldn't build a mart without a convention center.