Doing Damage By Doing What Isn't Needed

After a conversation about Cleveland�s past and present problems a friend asked me the other night � what about solutions. Do you have any solutions? It is a question I�ve been asked before.

No, I don�t have any solutions. I�m not looking for solutions. I don�t believe it�s my job to come up with such answers. I have one answer: We have to stop doing what we�re doing. Then we can concentrate on our problems. Then there would be time, resources and energy to deal with our real problems.

But so much energy and so many resources are expended on tasks that are not only necessary but are damaging to our communities.

Our leaders want to build too much of what we don�t need, that conflicts with what we already have and damages community that is already viable.

Forest City Enterprises Al Ratner once bragged to me about how many federal subsidies he has been able to get for projects all over the U. S.

This Brooklyn project is soaked in subsidies, not unusual for these unnecessary projects. This one, as others, includes a new arena for a Ratner family professional sports team.

Isn�t it wonderful that all over the nation we are spending billions of dollars to provide work places for multi-millionaire owners and millionaire sports players while so many ordinary people have no access to a paying job?

Washington Post columnist George Will tackles just that problem in a recent column and it has a link to Cleveland. He is talking about the Ratner project in Brooklyn, N. Y. Here�s is how he starts and I�ll provide a link to the column after this excerpt:

By George Will

On Aug. 27, 1776, British forces routed George Washington's novice army in the Battle of Brooklyn, which was fought in fields and woods where today the battle of Prospect Heights is being fought. Americans' liberty is again under assault, but this time by overbearing American governments.

The fight involves an especially egregious example of today's eminent domain racket. The issue is a form of government theft that the Supreme Court encouraged with its worst decision of the past decade -- one that probably will be radically revised in this one.

The Atlantic Yards site, where 10 subway lines and one railway line converge, is the center of the bustling Prospect Heights neighborhood of mostly small businesses and middle-class residences. Its energy and gentrification are reasons why 22 acres of this area -- the World Trade Center site is only 16 acres -- are coveted by Bruce Ratner, a politically connected developer collaborating with the avaricious city and state governments.

To seize the acres for Ratners's use, government must claim that the area -- which is desirable because it is vibrant -- is "blighted." The cognitive dissonance would embarrass Ratner and his collaborating politicians, had their cupidity not extinguished their sense of the absurd.

Here is the link to the entire article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101367.html

It�s a damned shame that all over the nation grasping developers help destroy communities, impoverish citizens and walk away with unearned millions of dollars.

Until we stop today�s marauders we have no chance to make livable communities.

The Ratners have been one of the major exploiters of Cleveland and part of the reason this city has declined so in the last 40 years.

City Tax Should Be Progressive, But It Isn't

Mayor Frank Jackson�s inaugural talk was uninspiring, tedious and lacking the very essence of what it said it was about � the future.

Jackson offered Clevelanders nothing.

We face consistent population loss and job market breakdown. The city�s outlook is dismal. Cleveland has fewer people though more poor people as a percentage of the shrinking population.

This is the situation for most Ohio cities.

But you don�t see the political leaders of the major cities getting together to find solutions. They should be a powerful political coalition.

However, they seem to be each drowning in a downward spiral.

They all need money to operate.

One solution to the problem of revenue is very, very simple.

Get it from those who have it instead of from those who don�t.

What a novel idea.

Jackson�s fee tax on garbage is an example of uninspired thinking. Same as his traffic lights as revenue raisers.

But those �solutions� are easier than a real answer.

How can cities raise more money? They have to get the Ohio legislators to pass authorization that allows the cities to tax on a progressive basis.

What a novel idea.

We cannot keep going to those who have less and least for more revenue. That has been the process with sales taxes and sin taxes, garbage and other fees, and traffic tickets.

What the cities need is a progressive payroll tax, not the income tax that now exists where everyone pays the same rate. For wealth people a 2 or 3 percent payroll tax isn�t a burden. For a family on a limited income, it is a burden. It�s a hardship.

Where is the politician who will sell this state-wide, among cities and their political leaders?

Why should LeBron James - just the use the name everyone knows � pay a 2 percent city income tax and Joe or Jane Jones, making minimum wage, also pay a 2 percent tax. On the first penny they make, too.

LeBron likely has more income that doesn�t pay the payroll tax than Joe or Jane Jones makes in 10 years. Is that fair? Is that wise?

Why shouldn�t people earning big bucks pay a higher than 2 percent tax? Why should someone making minimum wage even pay a payroll tax?

I know how much it hurts. I paid city income taxes when I made so little that I paid no federal income tax. So have many, many others.

When are urban centers going to take care of their people? When are their people going to demand it?

When are police, fire and other public employees � enduring layoffs, low pay and no raises � going to demand that those with high incomes pay a fair share? Why are they willing to give away money that should go to their families to the families of the richest among us?

The lack of concern by these public employees amazes me. Don�t they realize that tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are being given away to businesses whose owners are wealthy but pay city taxes at the same rate they do?

Here are the top ten cities in Ohio. I ask why aren�t the people and their representatives demanding fair taxation legislation that would relieve the financial crisis all these cities face:

Columbus 754,885

Cleveland 433,748

Cincinnati 333,336

Toledo 293,201

Akron 207,510

Dayton 154,200

Canton 78,362

Parma 77,947

Youngstown 72,925

Lorain 70,239

Don�t wait for the Plain Dealer to lead this fight. Their top people benefit richly from things as they are. This is the kind of corruption Terry Egger and Susan Goldberg don�t � won�t � see.

This isn�t a reform they would favor.

Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.