County Reform Needs... a Reform
Plus: Forst City Walloped By NYT Critic, Voinovich on Health Care and "Is it a Depression Yet?"

Somebody is going to have to reform the reform movement on County government. Otherwise reform appears dead on arrival once again. Why would anyone want to set up a Cleveland City Council for the County? It doesn't make sense to me.

What you'd have are eleven new politicians who all will need new staff and an expense account, creating eleven more fiefdoms. The eleven all by themselves would provide the unnecessary political egos for mischief. And, as someone pointed out to me, these eleven won't even be legislators -- as City Council members are -- because we don't have County laws as we have municipal laws. What would they do beside cause more confusion.?

The entire reform movement here seems to be something devised by suburban Republicans and County Prosecutor Bill Mason, who might just as well be a Republican.

Republicans want in on the action and Mason is just power hungry. Mason would likely even control the county public defender if that person is elected, providing him with control over prosecution and defense. That’s because Mason likely has the best political organization to elect someone County-wide.

Reform should simplify, not complicate.

There should be one fiscal office – not treasurer, auditor, or recorder – and the fiscal officer could be elected or appointed.

It would be crazy to elect a second Cleveland City Council. That’s the “reform” we’re offered.

Come up with a better plan or go home.

Forest City Walloped by New York Times Critic

Cleveland’s Forest City developers get walloped by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for the design of a new basketball arena in Brooklyn N. Y. “A colossal, spiritless box,” he writes.

Ouroussoff writes that the arena design for the Nets team would make it “fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis.”

Ouch!

Forest City’s Bruce Ratner and company dumped Frank Gehry’s exotic design for the more pedestrian work of Ellerbe Becker, the firm that designed Gund (now Quicken Loans) Arena here.

Writes Ouroussoff, “But what’s most offensive about the design is the message it sends to New Yorkers. Architecture, we are being told, is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich.”

Check out a link to the Times column here.

Forest City Enterprises and its Brooklyn offshoot – Forest City Ratner - have been under extreme community pressure as the firm tries to develop a massive project where once the Brooklyn Dodgers roamed and people now live. It includes the arena, office, housing and retail and was planned originally as a multi-billion dollar project with 18 skyscrapers. It has had to be cut back with the poor economy.

Known as Atlantic Yards, it has had strong opposition from a community group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

Can Voinovich Vote to Deprive Us of the Health Care He Enjoys?

Tell Sen. George Voinovich that we all want the same kind of health care he’s had for more than half his lifetime. Paid by us.

Tell Voinovich to vote for a health care plan that provides similar benefits as he has enjoyed for more than 40 years as a public employee.

We need a government health plan that will compete with private insurance.

What’s wrong with competition? Why are the insurance companies fearful of competition? Can’t they do better that the Big Bad Bureaucracy?

Call Voinovich’s local office this morning: 216-552-7095.

He needs to hear from all of us. 216-552-7095.

Americans have been trying to get the safety of health care enjoyed by all other industrial countries since Harry Truman.

As Harry said and I paraphrase, “Let’s give them hell.”

216-552-7095.

Is It a Depression Yet?

Have we hit bottom yet? Worse job news suggests not. George Zeller recently reported new unemployment claims as “alarmingly high and still accelerating in Ohio.”

The figures, he writes in his twelve-page report, means that Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland-Akron-Lorain-Elyria area and Ohio are all still losing employment during early June 2009 and “at an accelerating rate.” Not good news for the state or northeastern Ohio.

“The data for the new week were once again extremely discouraging in the U. S. nationally, and they were once again alarmingly unfavorable in Ohio. The level of new claims in Cuyahoga County remained disturbingly high in a new week.”

Zeller writes that the number of weekly new claims for unemployment in Cuyahoga County “should be less than 1,000” at this time. However, this week’s figure is 2,140, is at a level more than double the norm. Job growth at this time would normally be at a level of 7,023, making the losses more disturbing.

So, the bleak jobs picture remains dismal for the State of Ohio, Cuyahoga County and surrounding counties in this area.

How does anyone measure the human costs? Don’t see much in the news media that tells us the story of how our people are suffering under these economic conditions.

Zeller, an economic research analyst, has been compiling these figures and other economic figures for years about employment and poverty for various agencies.

The full report is available here.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com
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