Give Us Your County and No One Gets Hurt

The political orgy known as Cuyahoga County reform —
Issues 5 and 6 — finally climaxes November 3.

It’s a fight for control and power. Labor-backed Democrats want to
keep the tight grip they’ve historically held on elected county posts.
They face challenges from rogue Democrats, millionaire Republicans,
do-good reformers and businesses interests, who all say the system
needs to be changed.

The drama stems from a decidedly dry proposal. Issue 6 transforms
county government by introducing a new county charter. Instead of the
traditional three-seat board of county commissioners, this restructured
government would be led by a single county executive and an 11-member
council. The new charter would also eliminate the elected “row
officers,” like the auditor and sheriff; those posts instead would
appointed by the executive, with approval from the council. Those
appointees include a fiscal officer, who would take the place of the
auditor and treasurer. The only other elected official beside the
executive and the council would be the county prosecutor.

The driving force behind Issue 6 is a motley crew that includes
Democrats Bill Mason and Martin Zanotti, Republican fundraiser Ed
Crawford, the local League of Women Voters, the Greater Cleveland
Partnership and the biggest corporations in the region.

Proponents of competing Issue 5 are calling for less radical change.
They instead want voters to create a commission that will consider
alternatives for government restructuring. This, they say, will give
the public more opportunity to deliberate. The figures behind Issue 5
are old-guard, labor-backed Democrats, including the current county
commissioners, past and present members of Congress, Cleveland Mayor
Frank Jackson and Cleveland City Council.

The issues have created a clash complicated by the federal
investigations that have targeted commissioner Jimmy Dimora and county
auditor Frank Russo. While country reform has been explored in the
past, the corruption scandal has given this most recent effort
traction.

County commissioner Peter Lawson Jones admits that the commissioners
brought forth Issue 5 after labor leaders voiced concerns about Issue
6. Jones and other supporters of Issue 5 say the current reform effort
is a rushed attempt to take advantage of the public’s response to
county corruption headlines.

The complaints come from some people who played a role —
albeit limited — in crafting the Issue 6 charter, including
Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO. In a
July 10 letter to the commissioners, Applegate criticized the charter
process because it didn’t involve key constituencies. Applegate also
said the charter process was hurried and not transparent enough.

“This is a cynical move to exploit a difficult situation,” wrote
Applegate. “It is not likely to produce the results desired by an angry
electorate but very nicely accomplishes a variety of other agendas that
have little or nothing to do with improving county government.”

Proponents of Issue 6 have criticized the commissioners’
countermeasure as a stall tactic to keep labor Democrats in power. They
say the new charter creates a clear leader, more accountability and an
improved focus on putting people to work.

Zanotti says he is interested in fostering regionalism and that
change has been a long time coming. “I really believe our region is
dying and the one engine we have to turn that around is the county. I
felt this was our time to reform government.” It was the county
commissioners who “went behind closed doors, without public discussion,
without public hearings,” says Zanotti. But when reminded that there
weren’t public hearings to draft the Issue 6 charter, Zanotti says
only, “They weren’t required.”

“The idea that we’re going from town to town, village to village,
it’s good as rhetoric,” says Zanotti. “If people didn’t think it was
very good idea, they wouldn’t have signed the ballot,” he adds,
referring to the 53,000 petition signatures — as if hiring a
professional firm to gather signatures, as Issue 6 backers did, is the
same as holding public hearings. “November 3,” says Zanotti.
“There’s your public hearing.”

 

Jones, who visited Scene last week, says that he and
commissioner Tim Hagan have been treated unfairly. He says headlines in
the Plain Dealer have implied that he is somehow connected to
the federal probe. Interestingly, he voices a concern similar to one
mentioned by Jimmy Dimora: The Plain Dealer is one of the key
forces behind promoting county reform. “I don’t know any other way to
put it — the paper has an obsession with Issue 6,” says
Jones.

Jones says he can’t even play basketball without someone taking him
to task about Issue 5. He tells a story about a pickup basketball game
he was involved in this summer at a Cleveland State gym. Playing
opposite Jones was Plain Dealer publisher Terry Egger. According
to Jones, Egger told the commissioner: “I want to tell you how
disappointed I am with this Issue 5 you proposed.” When Egger called
Issue 5 a diversion, Jones said he responded defensively.

“Yes, we’re obstructionists,” Jones remembers saying. “We’re trying
to obstruct a bad idea from becoming a reality.”

Egger confirms that he expressed his disappointment with Jones but
said he was offering his own opinion. “I thought Issue 6 had been
brought forward in good faith by the voters,” says Egger. “He
disagreed.” When asked if his ties to civic and business organizations
— he is a member of boards for the Cleveland Clinic and the
Greater Cleveland Partnership — shows the paper’s hand on county
reform, Egger says: “I know that nothing that I am involved with, or
have been involved, would compromise our journalism.”

Jones and other Democrats have exposed that Issue 6 represents the
interests of big business and power-hungry Republicans. They point to
powerful influences behind Issue 6, starting with Ed Crawford, a
wealthy Republican fundraiser who has hosted George W. Bush at his
Kirtland home — in Lake County.

Mason has publicly said that he became friends with Crawford about
eight years ago. Crawford — CEO of Cleveland-based Park-Ohio
Holdings Corp. — was involved in the early talks that led to
Issue 6, but his influence remains unclear.

Mason, who did not respond to Scene‘s request for comment, is
an enigma when it comes to reform. He has no known history with the
issue, but he commands a power base from the proscecutor’s office.
Political observers say it will be interesting to see what Mason does
if Issue 6 should pass.

Zanotti too is a political riddle. He’s a Democrat who broke from
the party when he supported Republican Debbie Sutherland in her bid to
oust Jones last year. The decision pissed off then-Democratic Party
leader Dimora. Zanotti’s brother David is leader of the conservative
policy group the Ohio Roundtable.

Zanotti calls the “Republican takeover” theory a tactic to mobilize
and strike fear in Democratic voters. He says he is not going to run
for a county seat if Issue 6 passes. Pepper Pike Mayor Bruce Akers is
the only registered Republican on the Issue 6 steering committee, and
he calls the theory “patently absurd.” “This Republican takeover idea
gives me one of the biggest laughs I’ve ever come across,” says
Akers.

Akers predicts that Republicans might have a shot at two seats
should Issue 6 pass. His prediction is based on maps devised by the
proponents of Issue 6. Those maps divide the region into eleven
districts, and the drafters acknowledge that they were conscious of
race and voting trends when they sliced the county up.

The issue has also sliced up minority leadership, and many minority
leaders say that they were left out of the process of drafting the
Issue 6 charter. Judy Rawson, a former mayor of Shaker Heights who was
deeply involved in Issue 6, admits that the group mistakenly left out
Hispanic leaders, but says the argument that the coalition worked
behind closed doors is “bogus.” “I think that it’s simply an effort to
kill this,” says Rawson. “We invited just about everybody who is
complaining now.”

Some African-American leaders, including congress-woman Marcia
Fudge, county recorder Lillian Greene and state Senator Nina Turner,
became involved — but in the latter stages of the
charter-drafting process. Greene and Fudge have since jumped ship and
are now backing Issue 5, but Turner stuck it out and is paying a price.
The Call and Post criticized Turner as the “lone black who is
carrying the water for white folks.”

“I am disheartened. … I’m angry about it,” Turner tells
Scene. “They are fear-mongering in the black community, and
that’s not right.”

Turner says she is proud to represent African Americans as an
officeholder, but says she ultimately represents a variety of people.
“I have blacks and whites in my district, rich and poor, the educated
and not so educated. The only way we can change this is if we come
together.”

Various parties have united to talk county reform in the past. The
first big push for reform in recent memory came in 1995, and that too
was in the wake of a county scandal, after county leaders had
mismanaged an investment fund. A 14-month study by a citizens committee
concluded that the structure of county government was outdated. They
recommended changes, including combining some offices, that would save
more than $5 million in salaries and benefits. But the commissioners at
the time — Hagan, Mary Boyle and Lee Weingart — declined to
put the proposal on the ballot. Hagan told The Plain
Dealer this summer that the commissioners rejected the proposal
because “there was no support for it.” (Hagan did not answer
Scene‘s request for an interview.)

In 2004, a coalition that included the Cleveland Bar Association,
the League of Women Voters and Cleveland State University explored
reforms. However, their effort was complicated by a push from
Republicans who wanted their own measure on the ballot. At the time,
Republicans advocated an executive-council government, but the idea
never gained steam.

Reform was being explored again last year, even before the FBI raids
on county offices in July 2008. Governor Ted Strickland and legislative
leaders appointed an eight-member panel of clout-wielding county
residents to study possible reforms for Cuyahoga County. The group
included former Congressman Lou Stokes, Akers and Rawson, and convened
for the first time on the Saturday before the FBI raids.

The Commission on Cuyahoga County Government Reform met over three
months and held nine public hearings (which Rawson says were sparsely
attended). The commission ultimately concluded that the county lacked
transparency and confused constituents. They noted that the eight
elected administrative officials worked autonomously with little
oversight. They also said the lack of a legally designated leader among
the three commissioners hurt the county.

The commission recommended a three-member county commission that
included an elected president, thus creating one clear go-to person.
They also recommended scrapping elections for auditor, clerk of courts,
recorder, coroner, treasurer and engineer. The three commissioners,
prosecutor and sheriff would remain elected positions. The others would
be folded into departments answering to the county administrator and
ultimately, the president of the board of commissioners.

That plan did have its detractors, including Republican members
Jerry Hruby and Akers. The Plain Dealer proclaimed that the 6-2
vote to adopt the plan “signaled the death knell for a Republican
Party-backed move create up to an 11-member elected council and an
elected county administrator.”

The commission forwarded its study to the state legislature, where
it effectively died.

But Akers says the effort revealed much about the current county
government setup. “I was shocked that commissioners pass out a budget
to row offices. There’s no accountability, no reporting back —
[the budgets were sent] out and that’s it,” he says. “Everyone does
their own hiring and personnel. There’s no centralized purchasing. An
employee-evaluation program was minimal to nonexistent. When we asked
one official about this, he said ‘I don’t need to do that; I know my
employees.’ That’s a hell a way to run things.”

Akers says reform can’t wait. “I truly believe if [Issue 6] doesn’t
pass, it’s the death penalty of the county.” He says a reform measure
on the ballot next year (as Issue 5 proposes) would be overshadowed by
senate and governor races and “the momentum would be lost.”

“We’ll have lost more people, more companies, more jobs,” says
Akers. “I really fear for the future of this county. I’m in this thing
heart and soul; this is our crucial hour.”

Jones knows that the county government is in need of some structural
tweaking. Several of those adjustments include consolidating various
administrative offices like human resources. He worries that the new
charter’s mandate for economic development will threaten social
services.

The question of good government is not in systems, he says, but in
the hands of those who take the time to vote.

“There’s no prophylactic for corruption, other than picking the
right people,” says Jones. “The best safeguard is when the citizens are
engaged.”

dguevara@clevescene.com

This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2009.