By Roldo Bartimole
As 2005 made its way to an ending, Cleveland lost another longtime community activist Ione Biggs, 89.
Ione was a quiet warrior. She spoke with a calm but fervent voice and personality against war, injustice, sexism and racism. She was a faithful advocate of the underdog.
I don’t remember when I first met Ione but she became a familiar supporter of Point of View, the newsletter I wrote. When a certain issue struck her, she would call and say that she needed more copies of a particular issue. She wanted to spread information she felt strongly about, as I did. She always wanted to pay; often she sent more than I asked.
There came a time when she was in need of some help and she became a subject for the newsletter. She had been working in the City Clerk of Court’s office. Zeke Forbes, brother of George Forbes, was a top aide of the Clerk of Courts.
In her determined manner, she refused to participate in fundraising, feeling that employees of the Clerk’s office should not be tapped to fund-raise for the boss. Typically, office holders would have employees sell tickets to his or her fund-raiser.
If the employee could not sell the tickets, he or she would have to cough up the money anyway. In other words, buy the tickets themselves. That was a hardship for some. Ione believed it simply wasn’t just.
She refused to participate. When someone fights for a principle, it can give others courage. Zeke, in charge of contributions, retaliated by having Ione placed in a job where she had to lift huge and dusty court ledgers. She was not a young woman and she suffered from high blood pressure and arthritis. I found out about the punishment.
I called Zeke and asked why he was doing this to her, a 40-year veteran of city employment.
Zeke, quick with the street talk, lambasted her. He allowed his temper to run away with his tongue. “We’re not going to kiss her black ass and if she were white I wouldn’t kiss her white ass.” He also called her “a bitch.”
That was bad judgment on his part.
I quoted his nasty language.
Unfortunately for Zeke, the Call and Post, with its large black readership, picked up the story and his curse. His caustic description proved rather embarrassing for him. (Zeke called me wanting to know why I had used that quote. He was chagrined, thinking I’d clean up his language for him.)
Ione didn’t have to lift those old, dusty record books anymore.
Nevertheless, she would have for the principle even if, as was the case, she did not get support from her fellow workers.
Ione in her later years got a lot of acclaim for her work in the peace and justice movement. It was deserved, of course, even though it reflected more honor on some of the organizations giving the awards than on her. That’s because she didn’t need the honors. Her reputation had been established by her long years of supporting the right causes.
She will be missed along with Ann Chudner, who also died this year.
I hope that there will be young people who will take the place of these two women and continue their legacy of concern for others.
Smokers Light Up Less And Less, Sin Tax Tells
If “sin tax” collections over the past 15 years tell us anything, it reveals how significantly the decline in smoking has been in recent years.
Tax receipts for cigarette sales have markedly declined from 1990 to 2005. The tax of five cents a pack was established in a 1990 vote of Cuyahoga County voters. It was levied, along with other taxes, to pay for the Gateway project.
One doubts the less than a nickel tax had much effect on cigarette consumption However, rising cigarette prices along with societal disgust with smoking obviously had a strong effect.
The figures reveal a decline of nearly one-third in the tax, thus a noteworthy plunge in “lighting up.”
In 1992, cigarette taxes raised $6,574,131. The tax was and is 4.5 cents per pack.
By 2004, the last full year of tax collections, cigarette taxes totaled $4,277,201 or $2,296,930 less than 1992, the highest collection year.
Here are the figures for 15 years:
1990: (part of the year) $2,672,120; 1991: $6,232,497; 1992: 6,574,131; 1993: $5,663,847; 1994: $5,505,555; 1995: $5,861,697; 1996: $5,649,451; 1997: $5,513,456; 1998: $5,359,215; 1999: $5,694,442; 2000:$4,936,880; 2001: $4,441,684; 2002: $4,977,546; 2003 $4,313,700; 2004: $4,277,201; 2005 (Jan.-Aug.) $2,684,614. This final number for eight months shows a further drop in the cigarette tax, down to just smidge over $4-million if it were a full year.
The total collected from cigarette smokers: $80,358,035. Drinkers paid $71,132,414 for liquor, $73,197,329 for beer and $13,784,916 for wine. The grand total is as follows: $238,472,694 with another $2,085,028 in interest income for a total of $240,557,723 used to pay off Gateway bonds.
That $240.5 million could have been used in more productive ways than paying for the workplaces for many multi-millionaires.
The $240.5 million concludes the tax used for Gateway’s baseball field and basketball arena. The tax, however, continues to be levied for Browns stadium.
However, there are still more payments to be made to deal with overrun issues.
Cuyahoga County residents continue to pay off bonds let for Gund (Q) Arena to the tune of some several millions of dollars each January on $75-million in extra money after passage of the sin tax. (Someone might ask tax cutter Jim Petro who wants to be Governor why he helped push through these favors for Dick Jacobs and the Gunds when he was Cuyahoga County Commissioner.)
Further, the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County continue to pay $250,000 each annually to the State of Ohio. These payments continue until 2017. This repays loans made to bailout overruns in the construction at Gateway.
As of September 2005, “sin tax” revenue will be used to pay for bonds used to construct Browns lakefront stadium. County voters extended the tax. It runs another 10 years.
The bonds covered by these payments were supposed to raise another $87-million in 10 years. The tax now collects some $9 million each year.
The first payments for Browns Stadium from the sales taxes for September, October and November totaled $3,945,494.84. Of that sum, $1,013,804 million was from cigarettes.
It doesn’t seem as though there will be enough revenue left after paying some of the Browns bonds for politicians to tap this kitty for the convention center.
However, you may see a push for a half-percent sales tax increase countywide to pay for a $350 to $400-million or more convention center. There does not seem to be any other tax ready-made for such a huge project.
The Convention Facilities Authority (CFA), supposedly studying the need (ha) for a new center and a method to pay for it postponed its final meeting of 2005. It has not had a full meeting for months.
The CFA must be waiting for Mayor Frank Jackson to take office in January.
Jackson seems indebted to Forest City because of campaign donations and backing in the November mayoral election.
We will see whether Jackson will represent the same old gang or will represent a new leadership.
Let’s hope that 2006 will reveal the Jackson who has worked so long for the least of us.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoAtdelphia.net
(:divend:)