By Roldo Bartimole
Can you guess who wants to resuscitate the convention center boondoggle now? Organized labor.
Cleveland Tomorrow and its business cousins - not to mention Forest City Enterprises - could not put the deal together so labor now wants to flex its muscles for a regressive tax to finance a deal. Labor has done it before.
In a three-page, ham-handed letter signed by 13 labor leaders to political officials, the labor chiefs play heavily on the inability of political leaders to force a vote to burden the public with heavy debt and new regressive taxes.
It's obvious that all the unions - associated with the building trades and on stationary of the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council - have a clear self-interest in the construction of a new convention center at $400 to $600 million. It means jobs for their workers, a natural reason for wanting to spend.
They would build pyramids if it meant jobs.
Forget about cost. Forget about who pays the bills. Forget about whether there's a need. Forget about other community needs.
The main point means construction jobs.
The labor leaders ask in letters to Mayor Jane Campbell, County Commissioners Jimmy Dimora, Tim McCormack, Peter Lawson Jones and Council President Frank Jackson apparently don't care that the public doesn't want to spend the money for a convention center. The pols are listening, if not in agreement and some meetings are planned or contemplated by the targets.
A tax ballot issue next March, of course, would hurt the Cleveland schools, which need more operating money. However, the construction trades haven't worried about the schools that much.
The labor leaders, however, demand, "Your support to immediately secure the funding necessary to complete the planning process of a Convention Center to save the time once full funding is secure."
How shortsighted can Labor be? No question about who will be taxed or how much. Apparently, Labor cannot be bother with those small matters. They just want the money and do not care where it comes from.
It's a big problem with Labor - when caring only about its members, not about the larger public. It's part of the reason we are in the shape we in this society, particularly when lower economic issues are ignored.
Labor and big business allied and the hell with everyone else.
Cleveland big labor did that with Gateway and we can see what the results have been. It's done that with tax abatement and we see that we cannot fund schools and we have overbuilt downtown office space that creates not only vacancies but also a now have created a depressive attitude for Cleveland. The construction trades particularly opposed the Cleveland Teachers Union when it tried to limit tax abatements in the late 1990s.
All the tax abatements given in the 1980s and 1990s and continue today simply postpone (and worsen) the inevitable - that a no-growth Cleveland must shrink to meet its diminished economy.
The letter itself is amusing. The labor leaders say that they are "shocked" that an issue of such importance isn't moving forward. "We, the undersigned, the Business Managers of the affiliated local union of the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council are shocked that an issue of such major importance to the economy of Greater Cleveland did not have the unity of the elected officials to move it forward."
It goes on: "It's incredible that this project, which has and should have the support of labor, business and all political parties, has been scuttled because the elected leadership did not make a determined effort to make a public case for it."
Are political leaders simply to act as the stooges of Cleveland Tomorrow, along with the building trades, whenever some unnecessary building project comes along?
There are some implied threats in the letter also. "As business managers of our unions, we have always been able to rally our members to elect candidates who we expect will have the energy to promote policy that best serves the interest of our members and our community." The mention of community apparently tossed in for public relations purposes because "members" are really the obvious special interest here.
The labor leaders also ask for a meeting with the pols with John Ryan, AFL-CIO executive secretary named to facilitate a "summit."
What Cleveland Tomorrow and Cleveland's Corporate bosses couldn't force on the public apparently Big Labor believes it can. To hell with public opinion strongly against spending more big money for another big project downtown and with little evidence of a payoff but plenty of evidence of large debt to be paid by taxes. Regressive taxes at that. However, even that doesn't seem to bother labor leaders these days.
There are big construction jobs ahead for Cleveland. The $1.2 billion in school construction certainly will help with jobs in the construction trades. The Euclid Corridor project of the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) envisions some $246 million to rebuild Euclid Avenue from Public Square to University Circle. That also will create numerous trades jobs. The inner belt realignment and lakefront redevelopment also will create large publicly funded projects and construction jobs.
So it's not as if there are no jobs in the trades in the offing.
However, it is true that there's little building going on in Cleveland. One sees no evidence that there will be in the near future either. Cleveland overbuilt downtown in the 1980s with tax abatements and free UDAG (urban development action grants) to developers.
With a national recession and a worse economy locally, the situation Mayor Jane Campbell finds herself in augers badly for her re-election and the rumbling continues.
But doing the wrong thing - building an unnecessary convention center - will only be repeating the mistakes of the past and in the end causing more reason for a depressed Cleveland when this stratagem doesn't work out.
Finally, the letter stoops to use labor support for the health and welfare levy as a reason for stuffing its pockets with the convention project at the taxpayers' expense. "Most of us united behind the children in our community during Issue 14, even though early polls showed a certain defeat. Those polls were daunting, but we knew the needs were stronger than the pool results."
Presumably, the labor leaders- as civic, business and media sources - want to equate the dire needs of the ill, poor and elderly with the need of luxury hotels downtown for a new convention center.
Playing that card doesn't reveal their concern for the neediest in the community, but their need to use that as an excuse for what they really want and care about. It's as if it were done for credit, not because of the dire need. Disgusting.
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WHO ADVISES MAYOR CAMPBELL? Mayor Jane Campbell had her staff take a cut in pay as a symbolic gesture to stress the city's financial plight went a step further.
The Plain Dealer reported that Campbell suggested City Council members take a pay cut too. However, the administration said that the PD was incorrect and that it only sought legal advice whether taking pay cuts would be legal since salaries for the Mayor and Council are set by legislation.
Let me tell you, City Council members would rather cut their throats than take a pay cut.
Do not bet Council members will follow the Mayor's act, other than a possible showboat. Even Joe Cimperman, who wanted to end the policy of six percent automatic raise for Council when other city workers get any increase, has become quiet about taking any knife to Council income.
* * *
MORE SIGNS OF A MOVE? Stan Bullard's in Crain's Cleveland Business reported a couple of weeks ago (the Plain Dealer caught up a week later) that Forest City, home of Sam Miller and the Ratners, has turned over its leasing of its downtown properties in Cleveland to others.
Forest City hired CB Richard Ellis, a real estate broker, to lease its Cleveland properties, reportedly some 25 percent vacant.
Now Forest City holds many downtown spots including the Terminal Tower and the Halle's building. It's not exactly a novice in handling downtown properties.
There's talk also that the crisis with the Visitor and Convention Bureau and the dumping of Dave Nolan had some of its origins in the Visitor's Bureau desire to move its offices out of Tower City. That upset Sam and the boys. We know that Nolan got dirtied up and dumped.
Does Forest City's move to shed its rental duties suggest, as I suspect, another sign that Forest City has little real concern about Cleveland anymore and that a move of its headquarters out of town is only a matter of time.
Forest City, under the name Forest City Ratner, also has been having trouble in New York City. The company is partner with the New York Times in a proposed new headquarters for the newspaper.
The Times reported on Oct. 17 that the construction had been delayed until its partner obtained financing for part of the structure, 52 stories that Forest City Ratner would own.
"The Times said its partner, Forest City Ratner, had had difficulty obtaining a construction loan in the current economy for the portion of the tower that Ratner will own. The tower will be on Eight Avenue between 40th and 41st Street," read an article in the Times.
As per Forest City's hands-out policy, the firm wants heavy subsidies from New York City. Ratner's asking for $400 million in Liberty Bonds. The bonds were designated for rebuilding N.Y. after the 9-11 attack in lower Manhattan, not where the Times building will be located. However, Forest City does not like using its money, as we in Cleveland well know. Now, the Times reports, Forest City has lowered its requested subsidy to a mere $150 million. Ironically, the Times, its partner, got a terse comment, a decline to comment.
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