Developers Allowed to Decide Cleveland’s Future

Who rules in Cleveland now? The real estate developers, of course.

It used to be that top executives of the big corporate Fortune 500 companies and allied big law firm managers, along with numerous front groups, pulled the strings and directed what happened in Cleveland.

Now it seems with the disappearance of so many Cleveland Fortune 500 corporations and control of other corporations based in other cities, they play a less significant role in public decision-making. They just don’t have the community interest or the need as they did in the past.

Our public media, led by The Plain Dealer, are now expressing much outrage at some Cuyahoga County officials, with obvious reason. The same public media, on the other hand, show only boosterism for developers and their activity. There is little to no critical examination of their behavior.

While The Plain Dealer, for example, has expressed outrage at County patronage and I applaud the paper for this attention, it sends a different message to developers.

The paper adds up the patronage toll of the politicians to let the public see its damage.

Yet, just as the County Dems need a kick in the ass, so do developers asking millions and millions of dollars in public subsidies need a swift kick in the ass. Their behavior is as outrageously self-interested as the politicians.

However, the paper regarding development projects ignores the story. How could it escape notice that the Wolstein project has been racking up subsidy after subsidy? Why no full, detailed documentation of what the public is giving away?

This latter problem also meshes with our societal predicament of dumping the old for the new. This is very wasteful. It is environmentally stupid and damaging.

In the rush to gush about new developments, the paper has forgotten its own “Quiet Crisis” assessment of the city’s most dire needs.

Therefore, as the city authorize subsidies for luxury housing and luxury downtown hotels and retail, the rest of the city rots in neglect.

Greater Cleveland Partnership’s boss Joe Roman recently applauded “moving our downtown to the lakefront.” Such a silly comment from a supposed community “leader.” The fact that the GCP pays this man $426,231 (2006 figure) in annual salary and retirement benefits suggests why the inequality of our society is ruining us.

Does the highly-subsidized Wolstein project and the move of Ernst & Young to the lakefront suggest the major coup we are being fed?

The lakefront, after all, has been taken up by a history of bad decisions made mostly in two decades. I’m talking about building the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Browns Stadium and the Science Center at the lakefront. These institutions eat up a large portion of the downtown lakefront. The three of them also depend upon public subsidy and pay no property taxes.

Yet, not a single one of these recent lakefront venues – none involving private investment by the way – needed to be on the lakefront. They all could have been located elsewhere to better community advantage.

Now there is talk of Eaton Corp. possibly moving from downtown to Chagrin Highlands. That is just the kind of competition I warned about when the Chagrin Highlands project was conceived and delivered by former Council President George Forbes and then Mayor George Voinovich to developer Dick Jacobs. Cleveland downtown businesses would not resist the lure of cheaper virgin land in the suburbs. So Cleveland allowed the theft of tenants by opening land outside its boundaries. Now it may watch as a major office tenant escapes Cleveland.

So here’s what I’m saying: We need just as critical and discriminating examination of the private interests as we do of the public interests. The news media doesn’t seem capable of providing that critique.

And while I’m at it I’ll say something about the person the PD has chosen to portray as leading the fight for County reform.

Tim “Lazy Boy” Hagan.

Please, tell me they are not that stupid or bought off over there at 180l Superior.

The PD articles put Hagan out front as a reformer. His reform however is limited reform.

He’s for “reforming” numerous County offices – the treasurer, auditor, recorder, clerk of courts and other elected County offices.

But he’s – NOT - for reforming the major problem. The three person County Commission “hot dog stand” operation, the cause and center of much of the County’s problems.

Why? Because he’s one of three commissioners.

His reform saves his job.

Hagan has always been a political phony, playing the part of a man of the people while doing the opposite.

Back in the 1970s Hagan was a proponent of the recall of fellow Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Just couldn’t stand that Kucinich was being seen as a progressive force.

In the fight between Kucinich and the Cleveland banks effort to strangle the city and force it to sell its municipal electric system, Hagan took the side of the banks.

“Kucinich knows damn well he can’t bully the banks into investing money with the city. He apparently realizes the city faces the very real possibility of default later this year and is trying to set the banks up as his fall guy,” said Hagan in September 1978.

In a column in February 1979, Peter Phipps, a Press political writer, noted that Hagan was “out in the cold on another issue – the sale of the Municipal Light system.”

Phipps went on to note that Hagan, as party boss, failed in his attempt to get other politicians to join him in a push to sell the city’s electric system.

“By week’s end Hagan was forced to cancel plans to send out a sell Muny Light letter to 10,000 party regulars,” Phipps wrote.

Hagan has always been this kind of politician, eager to undercut fellow Democrats to his benefit.

Put in his position by his marriage to political/legal/business honcho James Carney (uncle of downtown developer John Carney a chip off the old family block), Hagan became the County Democratic Party Chairman.

By linking himself to the Kennedy family in the 1980s, Hagan became a national figure to reporters who come to town thinking that they will get honest comment from Hagan, their liberal hero. They lacked the knowledge or instinct to recognize what they have is a Joe Lieberman Democrat.

All along the PD has been a prime Hagan enabler.

You can give credit to PD editorial page director Brent Larkin, Hagan’s protector at the paper for many years.

The two have had a long friendly relationship with the once powerful Democratic law firm – Climaco, Seminatore, Leftkowitz & Garofoli, now broken by internal dissension and death but the stink still survives at least enough to never trust either Hagan or Larkin, who remains unfortunately the arbiter of political slant at the morning newspaper.

We lack an honest appraisal of what is going on in town and I don’t see any outlet that will fill that gap.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com
Comments? Letters@CoolCleveland.com

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