Helpful Hands in Your Pockets

Oh, do you think we’re being set up again.

The Plain Dealer is all atwitter about Sam Miller giving some money for a study to tell us what Sam Miller and the boys want now from us.

Don’t we already know.

A way to pay for a new Convention Center located on his land, near his other declining property, for his obvious benefit, and paid for by you and me.

Would he enjoy a study by his CSU buddy, Dean Mark Rosentraub with the imprimatur of the school’s urban affairs department? Of course, and he’s ready to pay for it – at least some of it. Rosentraub is also ready to comply, having quickly e-mailed the Pee Dee that he’ll take on the tough chore. The Miller name is on Rosentraub’s building and Miller is a CSU trustee. It is all nice, tidy and close.

What might be the result.

Probably what Rosentraub has been drum beating for several years – a new convention center.

(If we have any more privately funded studies of “what to do about Cleveland." we’ll have to import some people since everyone’s already serving on another study group.)

A new $350 to $500-million Convention Center is supposed to turn the Cleveland economic tide the same way Gateway did, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame did, or Playhouse Square did and or the Browns Stadium did. NOT. Duh.

However, it will help Forest City, of which Sam is family, bail out its failed Tower City project, already helped with tens of millions in subsidies over the past two decades. (See City Politicians Been Veery Veery Good For Two).

You can expect the final CSU study result to tell the County Commissioners that a one-quarter to one-half sales tax would so wonderfully benefit Cleveland that we can’t pass up the breathtaking opportunity. Hit the little guy again.

The money, of course, will be enough to float several hundred million dollars to – can you guess – fund a bond issue to pay for a palatial convention center that will bring floods of people (and a torrent of deficits) to our gracious county. No, to the prior and nah to the latter.

Another surprise. The Plain Dealer has signed on for another blank check venture. Again, predictability quickly trumps any honesty.

“It seems the time is ripe for even more progress,” the paper said in an editorial. More?

Newspapers can wonder why they are losing readership. It isn’t only because of competition. It’s because they essentially have made themselves irrelevant to the daily lives of potential readers, ordinary people.

The Pee Dee always fights for developers, be it Dick Jacobs, Sam Miller and the Ratner family or developer Scott Wolstein in the Flats. (See for incredible give-away details: Roldo Link Sweeney Jackson Council Disgraceful On Flats Deal)

The other possibility of a regional study of governance isn’t hard to discern.

“It used to be that the mayor of Cleveland was the titular political leader of the region. But today City Hall no longer has the resources or the political reach to even begin to fulfill that role,” the PD quotes “philanthropist” – its description - Miller’s challenge made at the NEO Success Awards meeting.

Miller doesn’t mention that he was Cleveland Mayor Michael White’s braintrust through his long 1990s terms and has been influential with mayors for decades longer in Cleveland. Shouldn’t that question his motives and success quotient now?

Cleveland mayors now aren’t powerful enough for Miller. It’s clear Mayor Frank Jackson isn’t the smooth talker Miller had in Mayor White

Maybe Miller would like to have governance changed to a County Mayor to ease his control over a larger constituency. It would also pretty much insure political power would be in the hands of whites, not a black mayor.

The pitch might be, hey, a new county building deserves a new single new county boss instead of the act we have now of the three stooges - brought to you by Sam.

Any governance scheme brought to you by Sam Miller’s money and Dean Rosentraub’s expertise will be bad for your pocketbook’s health, you can be sure.

Meanwhile, the PD reported on “the new guys in town” sounded off at a developers delight meeting at the well-subsidized House of Blues/E. 4th street.

The “new guys” are flexing their muscle. One hopeful, Bob Stark, who has done nothing but talk thus far, said, according to the PD, “We’ve got to change the old guard. Whether it’s Lou Stokes or Arnold Pinkney or Dick Jacobs or Al Ratner or, may he rest in peace, Bert Wolstein – it’s time for them to move on.”

Who elected Stark? Moreover, who believes his replacement of the “old guard” would be anything different or better?

He wants a $1-billion Warehouse development and looks for the same safe subsidy cushion given Wolstein. Stark, as Wolstein before him, will look to John Carney and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority to pave the way.

Carney – continuing the tradition of Carneys for the past half century – has his position as Port chairperson to ease public decisions to private favor. It puts him knee-deep in conflict mode. He’s partners with Stark.

Uncle Jim Carney, who ran for Cleveland mayor unsuccessfully, played the role of developer/lawyer/politician/party chairman/businessman into multi-millionaire status here. He gave County Commissioner Tim Hagan, then his son-in-law, a political career unavailable to him had his wife been Jane Doe (or should you spell that Dough).

All this desire for Power has no relationship to solving Cleveland’s or the region’s problems.

For the public, this does not matter: what developer will benefit by outmaneuvering the other.

Pray for Cleveland.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net
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