Quick, give me $250,000. “Why” comes later
By Roldo Bartimole

Does Mayor Frank Jackson have the same secret locally that George Bush has nationally? A subservient legislature.

Council has bowed to the administration by allowing the city, through the Economic Development department, to give loans of up to $250,000 without Council approval. More later.

The ability of Jackson to get the legislative process to run in tandem with his ideas and plans is an unusual situation with a body – 21 strong – that usually guards its privileges muscularly.

Council President Martin (Marty) Sweeney seems to have made Council an ancillary body to the Jackson administration.

The ability to make loans so significant without legislative oversight is a mistake.

Under new legislation, loans of up to $250,000 can be made on the say so of a single Council member. The Council member in whose ward the loan is made can say yes or no. It’s very likely he or she isn’t going to come up with reasons to refuse the dough.

However, this can lead to problems. Whose ward gets the money? Favorites of the administration? A quarter of a million dollars flowing to a ward project is a lot of money and may even be accompanied by other revenue from other governmental sources without enough oversight. It’s not likely the recipient Council member will ask too many questions.

Councilman Brian Cummings, West Side Ward 15, and a former director of a community development organization, feels that the legislation does what it needs to do and that it will quicken the process. As a member of the Community Development Committee of Council, Cummings, a freshman, feels that there are enough “checks and balances.” He says the local development organization would have to give it approval, a check that satisfies him.

Sabra Scott, economic development committee chairperson, didn’t respond to calls. She also has a disconnected home phone number listed on Council’s web site.

Council President Sweeney’s new aide, Allan Dreyer, formerly chief aide to Jay Westbrook when he was Council President, did return the call to find out what my inquiry was about, but never got back with an answer. Maybe they’ll put Nancy Lesic on the task. Sweeney apparently needs the help. It allows him to toss basketball off his office hoop. Marty, the noise! The noise!

How do the other 20 council members monitor what the administration is doing with such loans when it takes only one member to send $250,000 on its way? How do members determine how much money is flowing out of City Hall and to whom?

In other words, this policy could invite unfairness and possibly corruption.

The Plain Dealer, not surprisingly, endorsed the new policy editorially, “That (policy) should cut in half the time it has to reach a deal.”

In other words, the hell with process, the end justifies the means.

Allowing shortcuts in giving away money seems, despite the need for action, careless. Possibly buying trouble.

Giving away public assets now goes beyond a trend to an unhealthy function of government as harmful as a drug addiction to an individual.

To Poach Or Not Poach

There are ways to deal with the Poaching problem of communities stealing businesses from each other and at a high cost of public revenue. The Plain Dealer highlighted the problem but was skimpy on solutions.

“Poachers” really are the businesses seeking subsidies from one community to leave another.

The communities providing aid to Poachers should be forced to, at a minimum, share the tax increases they enjoy with the communities that lose revenue.

It should be a law that no school system should lose a penny of revenue with, at best, the Poacher making up the loss.

That would help put an end to subsidies to businesses to do what they already seem to want to do: move somewhere else.

I don’t think most of the moves are based on the subsidies but on the needs of the businesses to move. However, they will take advantage of anything they might gain for moving.

Tax abatements, low or no interest loans, outright grants, and many other tax-subsidized gifts to businesses should be outlawed by the state and, probably necessarily, at the federal level.

They are mere legal forms of bribery.

The other alternative is for taxation on these gifts. We should tax such gifts at 100 percent or close to that, making them insignificant or useless.

Governments have responsibilities to businesses and to citizens and that’s where their emphasis should be – providing excellent services – fire and police, education and recreation, health and sanitation and all the other public needs of a community.

When communities provide those services at the highest level then they will be successful as places to live and bring up families.

However, government has failed to keep these chores in mind as it has become entrepreneurial, maybe with some necessity. The trend, however, has gone far a field.

Governments should not be businesses. From building stadiums that price out most of its residents to creating new shopping centers when the old (not in time just existence) centers shrivel and die have become tasks unworthy of government.

Funny these give-away problems that beset government now don’t become the debated issues of our politicians and newspapers rather than how to accommodate more of the same.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)