By Roldo Bartimole
It’s summer, so let’s have some fun.
Let’s start the bidding.
“130.” “We’ve got 130, do I hear 200?”
“200.” “I’ve got 200, do I hear 300?”
“300.” “I’ve got 300, can I hear 400.’
“400” “400, we got 400. 400 going once, going twice…
“$500-million,” from the corner.
It’s CFA finance chairman Peter Bastulli, the principal in the consulting department of Cohen & Company.
After more than an hour “debating” over resolutions that made me believe I had once again stumbled into a City Council meeting, Bastulli came up with the figure of $500-million for the convention center – renovation, build-out or whatever - the still fake Cleveland-Cuyahoga Convention Facilities Authority.
Former State Sen. Pat Sweeney questioned that figure. It started at $130 million, he said, “How did it get to $500 million?” It is not hard, Pat, when you want to keep up with the Jones, or rather the Las Vegases.
Attempting to fine-tune things, Bill Reidy, CFA chairman and former partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers - the firm that recommended we do a new convention center – was a bit frustrated. (The firm has been paid $136,000 thus far.)
Reidy doesn’t seem to be able to control his authority members. That's a bad spot for the chairman. A number got testy during this near two-hour meeting.
Do these guys know what they’re doing?
They did actually talk about how to pay for this convention center, which will lose money from day one likely until they build another some 30 or 40 years from now.
Bastulli early in the meeting talked about a $400 million center; how bonding of $20 million a year would be needed to meet that figure. Even at 30 years that would be $600 million, possibly not enough to pay for the principal and interest of a $400 million center, no less a $500 million building.
They talked of an increase in the bed tax of 2 percent and a 2 percent food and beverage tax at restaurants countywide. State law now allows local officials the right to assess these taxes without a vote of those who will pay it – you and me.
More interesting, Reidy – who would not be hurt at all by his suggestion – noted that the County Commissioners could raise the sales tax for County residents by one-half percent WITHOUT A VOTE OF TAXPAYERS.
Reidy also stressed that going from a 200,000 square foot center to a 300,000 square center, as is the plan, will only cost $30 million more. What a bargain! Another 100,000 square feet for what amounts to only 7 percent (if you’re talking about a $400 million, not the $500 million that was sprung later in the meeting) of the cost Any way you look at it, Reidy’s suggestion is comparable to someone trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. Cheap.
Holy cow! Where’s Tim (Yip Yap) Hagan? Right where we need him now. Yell tax and Tim will come up with the rationale why it’s best for the community. He always has; he always will.
Dennis Lafferty, executive assistant to the managing partner of Jones Day and therefore Mr. Let’s Get It Done As Long As Someone Else Pays,” told the group of a meeting – a symposium at that, - IN CLEVELAND of convention industry promoters in conjunction with the CFA. “This is very, very exciting… Cleveland for one day the center of the best practices of building a new center,” Lafferty told his fellow members.
Is this a joke? Has it been too hot a summer for Mr. Lafferty?
We also learned that the CFA would build a pad for new hotel but no new hotel (wink, wink). CFA also would construct connectors from the Marriott Hotel (already enhanced by a 20-years tax abatement and a $10-million grant from Cleveland, payable after 20 years and at no interest) and to the Crown Plaza, once the Sheraton or also the Bond Court hotel.
Helping the hotels seemed fine with CFA members. However, helping the city of Cleveland didn’t seem to be in their plans. Lafferty wanted to make it clear that the CFA had no responsibility for Public and Music Hall in the present Cleveland convention center. Presumably, the taxpayers of Cleveland will have to deal with that burden. “We have not said we’d take that on,” Lafferty insisted.
Lafferty also bellyached about the use of a $400-million figure as the budget for the CFA. How, he asked, was the figure $400-million “morphed into our budget?” This was before the CFA was told it had a $500 million center on its hands.
There were hints that “other” money would help finance their desires – federal funds, maybe.
Can this qualify as Homeland Security, guys?
MEANWHILE, in another part of town, the summer heat was getting to Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton.
Some of the heat was in the form of the Cleveland Scene’s preempting (scooped) of the PD on the story – at least one of them – that Clifton anguished about in a column he now says was the “dumbest thing that I ever did.”
That dumb thing being that he wrote in a column on June 30 saying the following: “As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands. The public would be well-served to know them, but both are based on documents leading to people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail.”
On Thursday, July 21, the PD had blazing headlines, presumably based on those documents that could send someone to jail. Maybe even a reporter.
What happened between June 30 and July 21? Well, a lot of flak for Clifton, whether he was reasoned and correct in holding back those stories, at least one now out.
What happened, however, is that Pete Kotz, editor of the Cleveland Scene, apparently decided that going to jail wasn’t too high a price to get the story out. So it decorated the cover of the Scene a day before the PD decided the “dumb” decision needed to be revised.
We all know now that the story had to do with a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) affidavit that revealed a federal investigation of corruption at Cleveland City Hall and former Mayor Michael White as a target. White hasn’t been indicted for anything. Not legally that is. I indict him for plenty.
There have been similar episodes at the PD over the years. The staff was upset about the Clifton decision. However, being beaten to the story by a weekly alternative simply increased staff torment. In one of at least three messages that were sent staff-wide, Ted Wendling, the paper’s superb and underrated investigative reporter, called the day the “darkest day in 20 years” at the paper. He might be right. In 1982 (more than 20 years) staff discontent reached this summer’s heat after the PD backed down on a story it had published. The story involved naming Jackie Presser, then Teamster boss, as an FBI informant. The retraction crushed staff morale.
Clifton on Friday, July 15, was still going with his decision to withhold any publication.
He had an interview with Bob Garfield on WNYC’s On the Media program. Clifton got a bit huffy. Garfield asked late in the interview “So if there is a really rather remote chance of a reporter winding up in jail, isn’t the Plain Dealer being too cautious at the expense of its public service mission?”
Clifton: “No, because you’re presuming a remote chance, I mean, it amazes me that you can sit there and say what you just said. You haven’t a clue as (laughs) to what the facts are. And (laughs) you’re saying if it was a remote chance. Au contraire. I presume that there was a much better than remote chance, which is what drove the decision.” The “laughs” were noted in the transcript.
Garfield: “You know, I was really just asking a question, not making an assertion. I know it sounded aggressive.”
Clifton: “Listen, I – you know, I’ve got a very thick skin. I’ve been in this business 35 years. I was the executive editor of the Miami Herald before I came here. So it galls me that a bunch of armchair people who haven’t a clue are suggesting t hat I just rolled over. That pisses me off mightily.”
Actually, Clifton has a rather thin skin and it’s been getting a workout so maybe you can’t blame him for getting sulky.
After that Clifton made the statement - his decision to write about his decision was the “dumbest” one he’s ever made. And we concur.
Garfield also asked if the decision had gone to the publisher – Alex Machaskee (a snake’s snake) – and whether Machaskee or the Newhouse family “weighed in” on the decision.
Clifton said, “Not at all, nor did the publisher. I kept the publisher apprised that we were exploring these things and kept them apprised of the potential ramifications. But I never had a straight-on conversation about should we or shouldn’t we. That decision was made by me and by my managing editor Tom O’Hara.”
This makes me more convinced that Machaskee’s authority was present in the decision, whether Clifton believes he wasn’t influenced or not.
We will see where this story goes from here.
However, the content of this story, which isn’t that surprising given the record of the White administration, doesn’t go far enough. What’s most disturbing and probably never to be exposed is the cooperation – by omission or commission – of top corporate and business leaders in keeping the scandals quiet. They had to know something fishy was going on.
Where were the honest contactors, lawyers, bankers, investment firms, and particularly black leaders when these acts were taking place? And where was the newspaper, too. One has to credit some good reporting near the end of the White administration at the PD by Chris Quinn and Mark Vosburgh that hinted of some smelly deals.
Yet the people making legitimate money off White and the PD were only interested in what they wanted. As long as White was leading the parade for a new stadium, arena, restoring the Browns and second new stadium, along with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and airport expansion, they were all willing to look the other way.
Most tragic is the corruption of affirmative action by paying black contactor but expecting them to do no work. These black front groups, aided by white contractors and their deals, results in many African-Americans being deprived jobs and, most important, the job education only attained on worksites that will deprive many of the opportunity to be gainfully employed in the future.
You won’t see a true examination of this corruption by corporate, legal and money people. You won’t read it in columns by PD reporters, including Phillip Morris, as he does about chiselers who ask for dimes and quarters on the streets of downtown Cleveland. Let’s by all means clean these people out, but where is the bile for the downtown suit and tie chiselers?
As I write this Friday, the U. S. Atty. Gregory White wants to know the question Clifton feared could lead someone to jail: Who leaked the court documents? So we wait to see whether that will lead to asking the question of the Scene’s Pete Kotz or the PD’s Mike Tobin. One leak has been admitted.
The PD article Friday revealed it was one of two stories previously withheld.
“After Scene magazine published a story on Wednesday that described the story the Plain Dealer was withholding, the newspaper’s editors decided to publish it, Clifton said Thursday,” said the PD story. This was after also, I was told, that Machaskee had to be located to give approval for printing the articles.
Clifton said once someone else had printed the story, “holding back the story became moot.” He added now it was a “public service.” Some public service, a day late.
Apparently, worries about reporters going to jail were trumped by worries about looking bad in the national press.
AS THE SUMMER PETERS OUT, we might even get the Plain Dealer to write about an important mayoral election. Thus far, the coverage has been limited, sparse and uninformative overall. The need for debate seems to escape our defenders of the First Amendment.
To address just one aspect, the entrance into the race of a Republican, David Lynch, former mayor of Euclid, who has moved into Cleveland.
Some say that his candidacy splits the corporate community. First, James Draper, former safety director under Mayor Jane Campbell, was considered the “business candidate,” as some money flowed to him from name corporate people.
Now Lynch expects to draw his campaign spending money from the business community.
I don’t think this situation confounds the business community. There’s plenty of money to go around.
But it does remind me of the first Carl Stokes election in 1967 when top corporate/legal people in Cleveland wanted to get rid of the mayor, the late Ralph Locher. I’m not sure that they are as coordinated in their desire to get rid of Campbell, but it may be close.
So, money flowed to Stokes in the primary from Republican sources. As insurance, former Lakewood Mayor Frank Celeste was enticed to move into Cleveland, ala Lynch, in the hope that Celeste would take white votes from Locher and help elect Stokes the Democratic candidate for mayor, getting rid of Locher. (In 1967, city elections were partisan affairs.)
Stokes won without the need of Celeste’s meager vote. He defeated Locher in the primary and then Seth Taft, the real candidate of the corporate community in the general election. Taft had also moved into town from the suburbs.
So whatever the motives in Lynch’s candidacy, the conclusion might be very different from the scheme, which to me is to defeat Campbell and maybe elect a Lynch.
One thing you may be sure: They don’t want Council President Frank Jackson or Mayor Campbell. However, they quite likely will have one or the other.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo at Roldo@Adelphia.net (:divend:)