Category: Policies

Richard Shatten : A genius, and much more by Brent Larken Plain Dealer Thursday, February 14, 2002

Richard Shatten : A genius, and much more

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) – Thursday, February 14, 2002

Author: Brent Larkin, Plain Dealer Director Editorial Pages

The tributes to Richard Shatten that rolled in last night sounded like a broken record.”He was an absolutely brilliant guy,” said Sen. George Voinovich.

“He had luminescent brilliance of thought, a crystalline mind,” said former Cleveland Planning Director Hunter Morrison.

“He clearly had one of the finest minds of any human being I have ever met,” added former County Commissioner Timothy Hagan.

On and on it went.

Cleveland State University Professor Ned Hill said Shatten possessed “an intuitive genius.” Joe Roman, head of the Cleveland Tomorrow business group, said Shatten was probably the smartest person he ever met.

There were others, but the point is made. And, indeed, no one who knew him would doubt for a second that Shatten , who died of a brain tumor yesterday at the age of 46, was a genius.

But Richard Shatten was more than that. Much more.

He was – in order of importance – a spectacular human being and the unsung hero of all the good things that happened in Greater Cleveland during the 1980s and into the first part of the 1990s. First in his position at McKinsey & Co., then as the head of Cleveland Tomorrow, and more recently at Case Western Reserve University, Shatten made contributions to this community that are incalculable.

“If you were to ask me to identify five persons who were the most important to this community in the last 20 years, he would be in my top five,” said Squire Sanders & Dempsey lawyer John Lewis. “And he’d probably be close to the top of the list of five.”

With much justification, most of the credit for the Gateway project invariably falls to former Mayor Michael R. White and Hagan. But behind the scenes, the heavy lifting was done by Shatten .

“Richard knew as much about baseball as my 1-year-old son,” recalled Roman. “But that project wouldn’t be there without Richard. I used to scream at him for not taking credit for things. But with Richard, it was never about him. It was always about trying to get things done.”

But Shatten was also about more than shiny new downtown buildings. Voinovich credited him with convincing the private sector of the need to invest in inner-city housing as the city was emerging from default.

“Although he was working for the private sector, he had a public heart,” said Voinovich. “They don’t know it, but he touched the lives of thousands of Clevelanders. This was a sweet man who got up every morning and wanted to touch people’s lives.”

Shatten was a man with virtually no ego. He had no personal agendas, other than love and devotion to his wife, Jeanne, and three daughters.

For him, it was never about power and always about ideas – ideas that might make Greater Cleveland a better place to live and work.

“One reason this is such a profound loss is because Richard was one of the very few people who had a broad grasp of the region,” said Morrison. “In many ways, Richard got it much more than the politicians did. He was profoundly important.”

In the 1980s, before coming to Cleveland, Gund Foundation Executive Director David Bergholz was working in Pittsburgh and heard rave reviews about “this spectacular, very young guy from Cleveland” he would be meeting during a seminar held not far from Pittsburgh. “So I went to this retreat and was dazzled by him,” Bergholz recalled last night. “He was such a natural. He had enormous skills. And he was not one of these guys who was just brilliant and kept his own counsel. He was always willing to share everything.”

Last week, when he knew he was dying, Shatten took time to meet with County Commissioner Tim McCormack about an economic development plan the commissioners hope to implement.

“I can only imagine how difficult that was for him,” said McCormack. “But he did it because he was among our very best.”

They didn’t come any better.

“The Quiet Crisis” Series about Northeast Ohio from early 2000s (video)

A Quiet Crisis…the panels

These ran 2001-2004 and featured community leaders talking about how to improve the economic performance of NE Ohio

Through 14 round table discussions of community leaders that were broadcast on WVIZ/PBS and 90.3 WCPN, radio call-ins, in-depth reports on radio and television, newspaper articles, columns and editorials, the ambitious multimedia campaign highlighted the region�s problems and also offered solutions in ways that energized and empowered individuals and organizations to action and change.

https://video.ideastream.org/show/a-quiet-crisis/

“The Quiet Crisis” Series about Northeast Ohio from early 2000s (video). This part was a combined effort of WVIZ and Plain Dealer

The link is here

Environmentalism by David Beach written in 1997 for Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

ENVIRONMENTALISM – The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

ENVIRONMENTALISM. For thousands of years, American Indians lived in northeast Ohio and scarcely altered the landscape. But with the coming of European settlement and large-scale industrialization in the 1800s, much of the region’s natural resources were exploited and polluted within decades. Ever since, groups of far-sighted citizens have struggled to right the ecological balance. Whether organizing under the banner of the environmental, conservation, consumer, or public health movements, they have sought to rediscover ways to live well–yet live sustainably over the long term–given the natural limits of the region’s land, air, and water.

The CUYAHOGA RIVER has been a focal point. When Connecticut settlers first arrived 200 years ago, they viewed the estuary of the river either as a miasmic, disease-ridden swamp or as a green valley full of life. Those with the latter opinion left accounts describing clear waters, bountiful fish spawning grounds, rich bottom lands, and abundant wildlife. But those who saw wetlands as an obstacle to progress quickly prevailed. They set about straightening and deepening the river to create a port and filling wetlands to develop sites for warehouses and factories. The river became an open sewer running through the heart of the city, and by the 1870s water pollution threatened the city’s drinking water supply. Instead of curbing the pollution, however, the preferred solution was to move the water intakes farther out into Lake Erie.

The habit of avoiding environmental problems extended to air pollution. In the 1850s reformers recognized that industrial furnaces were creating a health hazard and passed legislation to control the problem. But opposition to regulation was fierce. For example, in 1860 a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indicted the Rail Rd. Iron Mill Co. because the smoke from its chimneys was a nuisance. The CLEVELAND LEADER condemned the action, saying that “the idea of striking a blow at the industry and prosperity of the infant iron manufacturers of Cleveland by indicting the most extensive and important of them all as a nuisance, is an act that should and will be reprobated by the whole community.”

In the early 1900s the smoke nuisance problem was studied by a number of civic groups without much impact. Then in 1926 the WOMEN’S CITY CLUB took up the issue and championed the creation of a city Division of Smoke Inspection. Through public education and enforcement, the division reduced air pollution for a few years–until the Depression hit and regulations on factories became taboo once more. By 1941 the annual “soot-fall” in Cleveland was estimated to be 90 pounds per capita. Among those hardest hit were residents of the Broadway neighborhood downwind of the steel mills. The neighborhood’s Forest City Park Civic Assn. and Neighborhood Environmental Coalition fought the steel companies in court, often with the help of the LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF CLEVELAND of Cleveland. The Air Conservation Committee of the American Lung Assn. of Northern Ohio was an important air pollution watchdog in later years.

One of the most significant conservation triumphs in Greater Cleveland in the 20th century was the formation of the Cleveland Metroparks (see CLEVELAND METROPARKS and PARKS) in 1917. Under the direction of WILLIAM STINCHCOMB†, the Metroparks not only provided healthful recreation for urban residents but protected important natural areas along the Rocky River, Chagrin River, and Tinkers Creek. The constant public support for the Metroparks over more than 75 years proves that citizens view green space as a wise civic investment. Another major conservation achievement came in 1974 with the creation of the CUYAHOGA VALLEY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, which encompasses 33,000 acres between Cleveland and Akron. In the 1990s a number of organizations, including Ohio Canal Corridor and the Ohio & Erie Canal Corridor Coalition, advocated extending the reach of the CVNRA by creating a National Heritage Corridor along the canal from Cleveland to Zoar. Throughout the region, local park districts and land trusts are now creating recreational corridors on a smaller scale by converting abandoned railroad lines to biking/hiking trails. In one prominent case, a nature center was created out of a fight to stop a highway–the long battle in the 1960s to stop the proposed Clark Freeway from tearing through the SHAKER LAKES. By the 1990s the region’s Interstate highway network was essentially complete, but ad hoc groups of citizens were still fighting new interchanges and the widening of roads that would bring traffic and sprawling development to their communities. EcoCity Cleveland, a nonprofit journal, analyzed the impacts of urban sprawl and promoted links between activists in the city and country.

A less well known example of land preservation is the Natural Areas Program of the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. Beginning in 1956, the museum has acquired a system of nature preserves that represent some of the best remaining examples of biological diversity in northeast Ohio. For many years institutions such as park districts and the Museum of Natural History have helped maintain a conservation ethic in the region. They have been accompanied by many citizens’ groups, such as the local Audubon Society chapters and the Burrough’s Nature Club in Lake County, as well as governmental bodies such as Soil and Water Conservation Districts and the Three Rivers Watershed District, which in the 1960s and 1970s promoted watershed-based planning in the Rocky, Cuyahoga, and Chagrin river drainage basins. The conservation ethic helped lay a foundation for the modern environmental movement.

The increased production and use of persistent toxic chemicals after World War, II raised environmental concerns even more serious than the conventional smoke and sewage pollution of earlier years. As Rachel Carson described in Silent Spring in 1962, chemicals such as DDT bioaccumulate in the food chain and cause reproductive and developmental health effects. Local members of the LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS (LWV) OF CLEVELAND helped form the league’s Lake Erie Basin Committee in 1963 to educate the public about such threats. Over the next 30 years the committee would also address the lake’s phosphorous problem, help ban oil and gas drilling in the lake and speak out on other water quality and coastal management issues.

On 22 June 1969, the long-suffering Cuyahoga River caught fire. It was not the first time the river had burned, nor was it the only river in the nation with flaming oil slicks, but the incident captured the public imagination. Thus, more than a century after the river’s pollution was first noted it became an international symbol of environmental degradation. Along with the “dying” Lake Erie, the river provided a rallying point for citizen indignation and contributed to a sense of environmental crisis. This culminated in the first Earth Day events in April 1970. In Greater Cleveland, Earth Day included a week of events billed as “Crisis in the Environment Week.” The symbol of the week’s activities was a drooping flower. One headline in the CLEVELAND PRESS remarked: “Hippies and Housewives Unite to Protest What Man is Doing to Earth.” Greater Cleveland had one of the largest Earth Day turnouts in the nation. An estimated 500,000 elementary, junior high, high school and college students took part in campus teach-ins, litter cleanups, tree planting events and other special activities at schools throughout the area. More than 1,000 CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY students and faculty staged a “death march” from the campus to the banks of the Cuyahoga River. A young man dressed as MOSES CLEAVELAND† rowed ashore to meet the marchers but soon turned away in disgust because of the filth he found. Activities also included a major conference on the environment sponsored by the Cleveland Engineering Society, as well as speeches by consumer activist Ralph Nader and community organizer Saul Alinsky.

One way citizens reacted to the wastefulness of consumer society was to organize recycling programs in their communities. In the mid-1970s, relatively high prices for aluminum and newspapers made recycling drives popular fundraisers. Following the belief that solid waste contains “urban ore” that can be reprocessed by local industries, the Cleveland Recycling Center was established in Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood to provide jobs for local residents. The Greater Cleveland Ecology Assn. composted yard wastes from a number of cities and sold the humus to gardeners and landscapers. One of the area’s pioneering curbside recycling programs was organized in CLEVELAND HEIGHTS by Heights Citizens for Recycling. Ultimately, fluctuating prices for recyclables and relatively low tipping fees at local landfills made it difficult for such recycling groups to convince city councils to adopt curbside programs. Solid waste recycling targets set by the state, however, helped persuade most municipalities to adopt curbside programs by the early 1990s. To promote materials recycling and reuse, as well as reduce litter, environmentalists in Ohio have sought to require deposits on bottles and cans. In 1979 the Ohio Alliance for Returnables got a bottle bill on the ballot, but it lost by a wide margin in the face of a well-financed campaign by industry.

Among the most influential of the local environmental organizations arising shortly after Earth Day 1970 was the Northeast Ohio Group of the Sierra Club. It was founded in 1970 by Albert McClelland, and early activists included Eugene Perrin, Paul Dyment, Paul Swenson, Jerome Kalur, Irene Horner, Ed Fritz, Emeline Clawson, Tom Jenkins, and Ellen Knox. By the mid-1980s the Northeast Ohio Group grew to more than 5,000 members who were active on 15 conservation issue committees, such as energy, nuclear power, pesticides and solid waste. Also active in the early 1970s was the Ohio Public Interest Action Group, a Ralph Nader-related organization based in Cleveland Hts. It joined the Sierra Club and other groups to fight the scheme for the CLEVELAND JETPORT (LAKE ERIE INTERNATIONAL JETPORT), promote state strip-mining reforms and protest the building of the Richfield Coliseum.

Concern for Lake Erie included activism to improve public access to Cleveland’s long-neglected waterfront. The Cleveland Waterfront Coalition, founded in 1981 by Helen Horan and Emeline Clawson, worked to establish a park on Pier 34, the area which later became NORTH COAST HARBOR. Clawson and Sierra Club members such as Alan Kuper also worked to get the city’s ill-maintained lakefront parks to be taken over by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Under the leadership of Edith Chase, the Ohio Coastal Resource Management Project has worked since 1982 to prod the state to complete a coastal management plan for the Lake Erie shoreline.

Nuclear power plants along the Lake Erie shore became a major issue for environmentalists in the 1970s. Activists Evelyn Stebbins and Genevieve Cook and a variety of grassroots groups–the Sierra Club, Citizens for Clean Air and Water, North Shore Alert, Western Reserve Alliance, Save Our State, and Ohio Citizens for Responsible Energy–protested the siting and licensing of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant on a marsh near Port Clinton and the Perry plant on an earthquake fault 35 miles east of Cleveland. In addition to voicing concerns about the risk of nuclear facilities next to the drinking water source for millions of people, activists predicted correctly that the costly plants would saddle consumers in the region with higher electric rates than would programs, emphasizing energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy. The nuclear plants also brought the problem of how to dispose of large volumes of radioactive wastes. In the 1980s, activists such as Arnold Gleisser criticized studies on the feasibility of storing radioactive waste in salt formations, fearing that the salt mines beneath Lake Erie might become a waste dump. In 1995 environmental groups around the state are fighting the siting of a “low-level” radioactive waste facility in Ohio.

To provide communities, workers, and emergency crews information on hazardous chemicals in workplaces, the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (now Ohio Citizen Action) joined with the Council on Hazardous Materials (now Environmental Health Watch), firefighters, the United Auto Workers, and oil, chemical, and atomic workers to get a hazardous materials right-to-know law passed by Cleveland City Council in 1985. National right-to-know provisions, such as the Toxic Release Inventory, gave local activists valuable information on industry’s toxic chemical releases into the environment. In 1992 Ohio Citizen Action spearheaded a state ballot issue to require more extensive product labeling of health-threatening chemicals. As in previous environmental referenda campaigns in Ohio, however, environmentalists were outspent by business by a wide margin and were defeated.

Since the 1980s, many citizens in the region have become environmental activists through grassroots struggles to stop incinerators. Residents of Cleveland’s Broadway and Kinsman neighborhoods joined suburban environmentalists to prevent operation of the GSX hazardous waste incinerator. A coalition of neighborhood and environmental groups stopped MT. SINAI MEDICAL CENTER from installing a medical and solid waste incinerator near the HOUGH neighborhood. And the unsuccessful campaign to stop a hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, OH, drew national attention.

Much exposure to toxic chemicals occurs around the home. Led by Judy Fink and Kim Hill of the Sierra Club, local activists worked to get public notification of lawn chemical applications and to reduce the use of pesticides in schools and other public buildings. Since 1984 Environmental Health Watch has been a community clearinghouse for information on toxic hazards in the home. Teaming up with the Housing Resource Center in Cleveland, EHW co-sponsored national “Healthy House” conferences to promote less toxic building design and materials. The organization is now working with the City of Cleveland to reduce lead poisoning, which is the number one public health threat to children in older housing. In addition, the FOOD CO-OP has educated thousands about the value of pesticide-free, organic food.

In 1990 about 40,000 Greater Clevelanders commemorated the 20th anniversary of Earth Day by attending the EarthFest celebration at the CLEVELAND METROPARKS ZOO. The event, has been organized annually since then by the Earth Day Coalition of Northeast Ohio. In some respects the environmentalists attending these latter Earth Days face an even more complex environmental situation than those attending 20 years before. On the one hand, it’s possible for the public to be lulled by visible progress. While Ohio still ranks high in toxic releases, the billions of dollars invested in pollution control by local industries, municipalities and the NORTHEAST OHIO REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT since the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act of the early 1970s have dramatically reduced some of the most obvious pollution problems. The Cuyahoga River, for instance, is now choked with pleasure boats rather than oil slicks, and Lake Erie has come back from the dead and has a thriving sport fishery.

On the other hand, less obvious–but often more insidious–environmental problems remain. They are often problems that don’t come from a specific “point source” like a smokestack, but come from countless, diffuse “nonpoint sources.” These include runoff from urban streets and farm fields, or the general burning of fossil fuels that contributes to global warming. Or they are lingering problems created years ago, such as contaminated sediments at the bottom of rivers and lakes or the thousands of abandoned industrial and commercial sites contaminated by previous uses. Or they are caused by urban sprawl, which destroys green space and makes people dependent on automobiles. Or the problems involve invisible chemicals, such as dioxin and PCBs, which can impair reproductive and developmental health in concentrations that can scarcely be measured.

Tackling such problems involves more than fighting a permit application, more than pointing a finger at one company. It may involve watershed management programs involving numerous municipalities and land owners, regional land use planning to reduce sprawl, or the phase-out of a whole class of industrial chemicals, such as those based on chlorine, the common element in many persistent toxins. To make headway, environmentalists are increasingly finding themselves working on collaborative projects with their traditional corporate adversaries. One example is the Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan, which since 1987 has enlisted a variety of stakeholders to develop a comprehensive plan to clean up the river and nearby portion of Lake Erie. Others include the Cuyahoga County Brownfields Working Group, which in 1994 brought together diverse interests to find ways to speed the cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated urban land, and the Regional Environmental Priorities Project sponsored by the Center for the Environment at CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY. Such collaborations seek solutions based on consensus rather than conflict, but they make environmentalists wary of compromise and delay.

In the 1990s, at a time when everyone likes to be called an “environmentalist” and “natural” is a marketing gimmick used to, sell more wasteful consumer products, environmental activists must continually re-emphasize what it will take to achieve a sustainable society. They know that, ultimately, it will take more than recycling bottles and placing pollution controls on smokestacks. As groups like the Northeast Ohio Greens insist, it will require fundamental changes–economic changes so that long-term environmental impacts are factored into the price of goods and services, political changes to revive democracy at the grassroots, and changes in values about what humans really need to live full and productive lives together on a small planet.

David Beach

EcoCity Cleveland

History of Public Housing in Cleveland by Dr. Thomas Campbell

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

PUBLIC HOUSING. As early as the 1810s, visitors to Cleveland commented on the wretched housing conditions. After the Civil War, as thousands of European immigrants were attracted to the growing city by opportunities for work, Cleveland’s slums grew along with its population. There is no evidence that 19th century city administrations addressed housing problems; even reform mayor TOM L. JOHNSON† paid the question little attention. MALL designers gave no thought to housing the hundreds of persons displaced for stately civic buildings. A 1904 Cleveland Chamber of Commerce investigation that concluded poor housing caused a whole litany of social and moral evils spurred passage of the city’s first comprehensive building code. This code followed the pattern already established by experts such as Lawrence Veiller, who opposed municipally built housing as socialistic. Codes, however, did not house people.

Dedication ceremonies at Outhwaite Homes, Aug. 1937. WRHS.

Between 1900-20, Cleveland’s population doubled, from 381,768 to 796,841; this influx of mostly unskilled workers worsened inadequate housing. While the city did purchase a parcel of land in 1913 for low-cost housing, none ever materialized. In 1917 the Cleveland Real Estate Board secretary claimed that there was need for an additional 10,000 houses, and another Chamber of Commerce investigation revealed that living conditions needed immediate remedy. This time the chamber funded a real estate firm for housing AFRICAN AMERICANS in the old Central area and tried to secure a million dollars from the federal Wartime Emergency Housing program. The scheme was dropped, however, when the war ended.

During the postwar period, housing problems increased, especially for the growing black population. National reformers introduced the concept of limited-dividend housing: investors would receive only a 6% return, but the housing would be tax-exempt. State legislator ERNEST J. BOHN† studied the program. In 1932 former city manager DANIEL E. MORGAN† and Bohn, now representing HOUGH on CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL, pressed for passage of the state Public Housing Act, which authorized the creation of a semiprivate Public Housing Corp. to build low-cost housing. The law failed to work, however, because reformers were unable to secure tax exemption to attract private investment. Undaunted, Bohn persuaded the city council to investigate housing conditions. In 1933 Cleveland sponsored the first national slum-clearance conference, attended by experts who formed the National Assn. of Housing Officials, with Bohn as president. In Cleveland, Bohn continued to press for legislation that would provide tax incentives for investment in low-cost housing. His pragmatic approach was attractive to the ailing construction industry and reformers. In 1934 a limited-dividend housing bill with, tax exemption came into operation. Its sponsors thought that such housing could be built with Reconstruction Finance Corp. funds, but plans failed when local sponsors could not raise the required 15% matching money. Bohn concluded that “slum clearance and the construction of housing for poor people would have to be taken on as a direct public responsibility without private investments.” To persuade Clevelanders that slum areas were an economic liability, he launched a study with the assistance of Bp. ROBERT B. NAVIN†, a sociologist, and HOWARD WHIPPLE GREEN†, a demographer. Their examination of the area between Central and Woodland avenues from E. 22nd to E. 55th streets demonstrated that the decrease in tax revenue, relative to the cost of city services, in this slum was equivalent to an annual subsidy of $51.10 per resident. Bohn believed that the results of this study, replicated in other cities, were largely responsible for the acceptance of public-supported, low-income housing. With the New Deal, $150 million of the Public Works Administration (PWA) budget was set aside for housing. Because of Bohn’s work and that of local architects and contracting firms on limited-dividend schemes, Cleveland got the first 3 PWA Housing Division projects. Members of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA, see CUYAHOGA METROPOLITAN HOUSING AUTHORITY) served as informal members of the Cleveland Housing Committee, the PWA advisory body, and worked with the directors of the limited-dividend company that had options on the Cedar-Central land. PWA financed innovative housing projects at Cedar-Central, Outhwaite, and LAKEVIEW TERRACE, built between 1935-37.

When the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act of 1937 created the U.S. Housing Authority, with power to loan and grant to local housing agencies, CMHA ceased its advisory role and began developing, constructing, and operating low-rent housing, under Bohn’s direction. The federal statute required that local communities contribute 20% of the federal subsidy, in the form of municipal tax exemption. In 1938 CMHA and Cleveland agreed to cooperate in “equivalent elimination” of substandard dwellings. For each new dwelling unit built by the housing authority, one substandard dwelling would be demolished or brought up to housing code by the city; the city would also provide city services without charge. (In later years, CMHA did contribute a percentage of these costs.) CMHA and Cuyahoga County also signed an agreement. CMHA’s first housing projects were Valleyview, Woodhill, Carver Park, and extensions to Outhwaite. In 1940 the authority took over the operation of the PWA Housing Division estates of Cedar, Outhwaite, and Lakeview Terrace. Bohn resigned city council that year to become the first paid director of CMHA, a job he had been performing since 1933. He served in that position for the next 28 years and became very influential in the field. Bohn’s imprint was, on every policy established by the board or executed by the management. As housing problems became acute after World War II, his modus operandi came increasingly under attack.

In the early years, the selection of estate residents was carefully monitored. Recreation facilities were provided and staffed by the WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION (WPA), which also provided cultural performances. Families on relief were not initially allowed into the estates because they were not able to pay the fixed rents, but in 1949 such discrimination was prohibited by the Taft Housing Act. Without formal policy, blacks and whites were clearly separated into different estates. Despite extensive picketing by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the passage in 1949 of a city ordinance banning racial discrimination in public housing, the situation remained unchanged until the late 1960s. At the 1966 U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearings in Cleveland, a report noted that African American public-housing tenants (over 47% of all tenants by 1965) were still concentrated in a few east-side estates.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the city had witnessed enormous demographic and social changes. The African American population of Cleveland increased from 85,000 in 1940 to 148,000 by 1950. In the next decade, approx. 100,000 southern blacks migrated into Cleveland as over 170,000 whites left for the suburbs. Urban renewal and highway construction displaced over 11,000 people by 1966. The Hough area, with 40,000 people in 1940, had over 82,443 residents, mostly African Americans, by 1956. Throughout the city, increasingly crowded housing deteriorated.

CMHA continued pioneering projects such as high-rise buildings for the elderly, which offered federally funded services. The country’s first such housing was a 14-story building, part of the Cedar extension. But the increase of slums around deteriorating housing estates and the rise of a militant civil-rights movement called for new approaches. Although Bohn managed 11 projects housing 26,000 people by the mid-1960s, he refused to consider rehabilitation of existing houses or new concepts, such as scattered-site housing. Within a year of his election, Mayor Carl B. Stokes secured Bohn’s resignation. Bohn’s successor, Irving Kriegsfeld, former executive director of the nonprofit housing group PATH (Plan of Action for Tomorrow’s Housing), aggressively pushed to end racial discrimination in west-side estates, promoted scatter-site housing throughout the city, and built integrated housing on the west side. Unlike Bohn, who had been a skillful politician, Kriegsfeld relied solely on the mayor’s support to advance his programs. White council members James M. Stanton and Dennis Kucinich opposed new housing on the west side, while black council members protested scattered-site housing in their middle-class neighborhoods. Stokes backed Kriegsfeld completely despite the, political ramifications and, in retrospect, considered the building of 5,496 housing units under his administration as one of his “true and lasting achievements.”

Stokes’s successor, Ralph J. Perk, strongly opposed expanding public housing into middle-class areas. The new CMHA director, Robert Fitzgerald, formerly the authority’s chief engineer, found the problems almost insurmountable. Federal housing policy favored private-sector approaches–rent supplements and low-interest loans for private developers to build or rehabilitate houses for the elderly and families of low and moderate incomes. The loans later changed to deep subsidy through the Section 8 program of the 1974 Housing Act. Increasingly, housing estates were occupied by single women, heading WELFARE/RELIEF households. With federal limits on the percent of a family’s income that could be collected (instituted in 1968), rents no longer provided sufficient maintenance funds. CMHA became increasingly dependent on federal money, but the government provided only 90% of funds required for maintenance and less than half of other expenses. Deterioration spread, as did drug peddling and juvenile crime. Residents abandoned their Valleyview apartments, plagued by arson and vandalism. In July 1978 police officers refused to enter the estates without 2-person patrols. When ordered to resume their single patrols, police went on strike, which ended only after bitter confrontations between Mayor Kucinich and the union. CMHA conflict and crime made daily headline news.

In the midst of despair, the tenants organized; they fought to secure representation on the CMHA board, better security, and improved facilities. Local council members obtained community block grants to help finance additional security and community improvements. TheCLEVELAND FOUNDATION funded grants for tenant-management training. Lakeview Terrace’s tenant council invited Bertha Gilkey, an activist from St. Louis, to help them organize self-management of their estate. Between 1976 and 1986, housing for the elderly continued to spread. Not usually in slum areas, they have not been plagued with the problems that have afflicted Cedar Extension and Riverview. In the 1980s, executive director George M. James changed policy regarding rehabilitation. Proposals for demolition of Cedar and Lakeview Terrace apartments were rejected in favor of restoration and improvement. In the summer of 1985, newly restored model suites in the Cedar estate were presented at the 50th anniversary of its construction. With all its faults and shortcomings, the public-housing movement in Cleveland brought decent housing to hundreds of thousands of low-income people.

Thomas F. Campbell

Cleveland State Univ.

Focusing Better on Big Picture: Concept of Regionalism Grows on Local Leaders: Joe Frolik Plain Dealer/NEOMG February 12, 2006

ONLINE: Read more, including The Plain Dealer’s “A Region Divided,” on the Web. www.cleveland.com/region

It was Plato who first identified necessity as the mother of invention.

But if the Greek philosopher were to pop up in Cleveland these days, he just might conclude that necessity has another child: regionalism.

Not so long ago, regionalism was an orphan concept dismissed as — pick your poison — too vague, too idealistic or even too threatening to warrant serious discussion. Now, everyone’s talking about it. Consider:

The new mayor of Cleveland plans to hire a regional economic development director, who will be part deal maker, part visionary. He’s also cozying up to a group of suburban mayors and city managers who want to start a regional development fund and to replenish it by sharing tax revenue.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to find one of those suburban mayors who isn’t talking about some regional approach to everything from recreation to fire protection.

And the Cuyahoga County commissioners are quietly crafting a regional investment package that would address big capital needs, money for the arts and even brain drain.

For now, the commissioners and most of the mayors use region as a synonym for Cuyahoga County or a group of adjacent communities. But other conversations are exploding on an even bigger canvas.

Foundations from 15 counties are investing in a regional economic development initiative and want thousands of average folks to help plot Northeast Ohio’s future. Business organizations from Lorain to Youngstown created Team NEO to market the region and aid companies looking to move or expand here. Two-dozen local colleges and universities are co-

operating to sell students on this region as a great place to learn — and to live after graduation.

In part, these efforts reflect simple reality. Geographic regions are the defining units of commerce in the 21st century. To Adam Smith’s invisible hand, every community here — be it a big city like Cleveland or an exurban outpost like Burton — already feels connected.

“The marketplace sees the region and the marketplace is where we have to have impact,” says Joseph Roman, president of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “And to do that, we have to use every available resource.”

Which gets us back to necessity. Although many of our companies excel, and many of us enjoy an enviable quality of life, this region overall has not kept pace with economic growth elsewhere. The result is the half-century of stagnation that we’ve come to call Greater Cleveland’s “Quiet Crisis.” And it touches almost every aspect of life.

The cost of government services keeps rising faster than property values or tax revenue. Citizens want those services, but are too concerned about their own economic prospects to accept higher taxes. As the region fails to generate enough new wealth, foreclosures and blight creep into affluent suburbs. Talented young people look elsewhere for opportunities. Old racial and class lines harden at a time when openness and diversity are more prized than ever.

If you’re a mayor or other elected official, you have to find ways to cut costs without eroding services, so you start thinking about sharing some burdens with your neighbors. Business leaders look for lower taxes and less red tape to become more competitive and create more jobs. Leaders of minority or inner-city communities realize that, unless the economy grows, their constituents will never reach their potential.

Thus the newfound interest in regionalism — not as an end to itself, but as a tool to fix what ails us.

“In some respects, this region doesn’t have a choice but to try something new,” says John Powell, director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. “Yes, it’s hard. Change is always hard. But keeping the status quo is harder.”

Powell’s very presence in the regionalism discussion reflects its new tone. He and two other nationally recognized African-American policy experts have been hired by the Presidents’ Council to examine what kinds of regional approaches have been tried elsewhere and what might work here, given Greater Cleveland’s history and culture. The council is comprised by leading black business owners who want to ensure that their community is not only at the table when regionalism is discussed, but ready to help set the agenda.

That’s significant, because until now most black leaders have viewed regionalism with skepticism, or even hostility. They would hear regionalism and figure it’s a code word for a government consolidation that would dilute black voting power and strip Cleveland of its assets. End of conversation.

Now, says the Presidents’ Council’s Lonzo Coleman, “It’s better for all of us to be at the table and have the right conversations.”

(It’s worth noting that many folks in outlying counties still hear regionalism and figure it’s a code word for siphoning their assets to Cleveland. But that’s another column).

Think of the change at City Hall in just five years: When Michael R. White was mayor of Cleveland, he dismissed regionalism talk by asking its proponents when they planned to pony up for the city’s public schools and public housing. Jane Campbell talked a more favorable game, but usually focused on what Cleveland needed from its neighbors.

Frank Jackson is the first mayor to speak in terms of partnership and mutual benefit — though he, too, is crystal clear that education needs to be seen as a regional responsibility. After all, how can this area compete if it relegates thousands of children every year to second-class schooling in a world where economic power and education go hand in glove?

Jackson remains vehemently against government consolidation, but so is almost everyone at this point. So why not look for areas of possible cooperation — shared services, purchasing, job attraction — rather than pick a huge fight that will lead nowhere?

When OfficeMax was deciding where to locate its merged corporate headquarters, Campbell and Shaker Heights Mayor Judy Rawson brought together 14 public and private entities and 22 funding sources to pitch Greater Cleveland. It still wasn’t enough, but it offered a glimpse of what has to happen in the future.

“Before, when somebody mentioned regionalism, it was, ‘How is my ox going to be gored with this new idea?’ ” says Rawson. “Now it’s, ‘Can we make the region stronger?’ And if so, ‘. . . Does it benefit my community?’ And the answer to those questions, increasingly, is yes.”

How Cuyahoga County Reform Effort Turned Into Political Turmoil Plain Dealer/NEOMG September 13, 2009

COUNTY REFORM

The threats started in May, soon after State Sen. Nina Turner publicly voiced support for Cuyahoga County reform.

Several operatives for Cleveland’s most powerful black Democrats – many of whom Turner had looked up to – telephoned the young black Democrat with this dire warning: They would ruin her if she didn’t reconsider, Turner said.

How dare she break ranks with black leaders, they admonished, according to Turner.

The Call & Post – a weekly newspaper aimed at the region’s black community – followed with an editorial against “white-led” reform. It labeled Turner the “lone black who is carrying the water for white folks.”

The battle to overhaul county government is ugly.

Political maneuvering, underhanded dealings and other shenanigans have fractured Cuyahoga County’s mighty Democratic Party, which for generations has controlled the county government’s $1.3 billion annual budget and 9,000 employees.

It has splintered along lines of race, organized labor and groups loyal to different party leaders. But the breaks aren’t clean. While many of the area’s older black leaders want to further study reform, others – particularly younger black professionals – have started lining up with Turner, who wants a county-executive form of government now.

The discord comes at a tough time for the party. A wide-ranging public-corruption investigation into county government threatens to upend the highest levels of its leadership, including County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora.

Dimora, who hasn’t been charged, chaired the party for 15 years and wielded enormous power, in part because he held together competing factions at war now.

But Dimora has stepped aside. And several people have pleaded guilty to contract steering and bribery in what federal prosecutors have described as a kickback-funded political machine that exists to provide the high life to elected leaders and their supporters.

Now, voters in November must sort through competing ballot issues to reform county government and competing slates of candidates who want to control whatever change might come.

How did we get here?

In February, Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti slipped into a seat at the Hanna Deli on East 14th Street for his first meeting on county reform. Although he was sitting in the shadow of the PlayhouseSquare theaters, Zanotti could never have anticipated the drama about to unfold.

Zanotti – who chairs the Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association – is a lifelong Democrat but rarely active in the county party machine.

Some never trusted Zanotti because his brother, David, founded the Ohio Roundtable, a conservative think tank. Others, including Dimora, turned against Zanotti in 2008 after the mayor backed a Republican in the race for county commissioner.

Few politicos were surprised by Zanotti’s reform effort. He has worked on various government reform efforts since at least 2004.

Nevertheless, Zanotti knew he had to win over the party faithful – particularly black leaders – if county reform had a chance of happening. Zanotti said he purposely scheduled his first meeting with Arnold Pinkney, the shrewd, 78-year-old political operative who has turned out Cleveland’s black vote for decades.

Black voters in the county, historically, have opposed government reform because they fear it could steal power they fought generations to gain. Even now, Cuyahoga, which is about 30 percent black, has only two black nonjudicial countywide officeholders – Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and Recorder Lillian Greene. And each was elected only after first being appointed.

Zanotti wanted Pinkney to help break through the fear. As Zanotti tells it, he told Pinkney that reform must move forward but that it couldn’t if the change was seen as racially divisive.

“I told him we needed equity for all. There’s no need for this to be racial,” Zanotti said.

He explained to Pinkney that he and some other suburban mayors were forming a group to come up with a plan. He asked Pinkney to act as a sounding board for the black community and as a catalyst to bring its leadership to the table.

When Zanotti left the deli, he was hopeful. He said Pinkney agreed to help the plan’s supporters make the needed inroads.

Pinkney, however, remembers the meeting differently. He said he never agreed to help bring black leaders into the process, and told Zanotti to reach out to officials in the black community, including Cleveland’s mayor.

From the start, Jackson refused to meet with Zanotti’s group. Jackson has long worried about how government reform – particularly regionalism – might affect the black community. About six years ago, when he was Cleveland City Council president, Jackson asked a group of CEOs from some of the largest black-owned businesses in the area to study how regionalism might affect blacks.

The group, called the Presidents” Council, came back in 2006 with a 303-page report that acknowledged the fear of change among blacks. But the report suggested black voters might embrace regionalism if it improved everything from health care and education to taxes and transportation.

This year, as Jackson declined to join reform discussions, he often brought up issues raised in the Presidents” Council document.

Essentially, Jackson believes reformers have put the cart before the horse. He wants them to first decide what they want to accomplish – an overhaul of health care, for example, since both the city and the county have facilities – and then design a government structure to attain the goal.

Instead, Jackson said, reformers decided to first streamline government, by consolidating power in a county executive.

“What I’m talking about is a systemic change,” Jackson said recently. “If you just consolidate power, all you’ll have is a more efficient way of doing the same thing over and over.”

Citing the same reason, Jackson in February also declined to meet with another group of reformers. County Prosecutor Bill Mason – a Democrat – and Ed Crawford – a Republican businessman – led this group.

Many political insiders were stunned by this pairing, and even that Mason was involved in reform at all.

The Parma native is an insider’s insider in the county Democratic Party. Why would he want to change a government he helped foster?

Mason has a simple answer – to save a dying region. Doubters suspect otherwise.

As the FBI snoops through the homes and offices of Cuyahoga County Democrats looking for corruption, the doubters say Mason may want to shed his party insider image and rebrand himself a reformer who crosses party lines.

Mason and Crawford met about eight years ago and became friends. They launched their movement around the same time as Zanotti by inviting a mix of local labor leaders, Democrats and wealthy Republican fund-raisers like insurance magnate Umberto Fedeli and medical equipment manufacturing tycoon Mal Mixon.

Mason, like Zanotti, recognized the importance of including black voices in the process and invited Pinkney and other black leaders.

As March began, it became clear black leadership wasn’t interested in either reform effort. And worse, many Democrats opposed to change scoffed at the reformers” ideas.

Fearing the competing efforts could stall reform, Mason and Zanotti joined forces in early April. The alliance surprised some Democrats who fretted reform was gaining momentum. Then organized labor, one of Mason’s most dependable allies, fired a warning shot.

Harriet Applegate – director of the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor – sent a memo to supporters, encouraging them to call both the state Democratic chairman and Gov. Ted Strickland to complain about Mason, who wanted Ohio’s secretary of state job.

The memo included a half-dozen points, including Mason involving Republicans in reform and the possible elimination of “elected offices in a county which is the largest and most solidly Democratic Party in Ohio.”

Applegate recently explained her memo: “Here is this guy who is supposed to be [labor’s] friend, and he has been talking to a Republican for months and not talking to me.”

Mason did talk to some labor leaders, but Applegate said she represents labor as an institution and should have been approached.

There were other feelings hurt in early April. After The Plain Dealer reported Zanotti’s disappointment over the lack of black leaders discussing reform, Recorder Greene complained to the newspaper about Zanotti: “You haven’t talked to me, so don’t represent that you have reached out to black leaders.”

Zanotti said that around this time, he met with Pinkney for a second and last time and again left convinced that Pinkney was reaching out to black leaders on the reformers” behalf.

Pinkney again said that Zanotti misunderstood. Some sort of reform is needed, Pinkney said, but he never agreed to help Zanotti. “I couldn’t participate in a plan put together by a small group of people that didn’t include African-Americans, Hispanics, the clergy,” Pinkney said recently.

Members of the reform group were worried. They had met for nearly two months without input from the black community. Several had even sidestepped Pinkney and invited Rep. Marcia Fudge and senior black leaders to join them. None had shown up.

Finally, they reached out to the younger generation and invited Nina Turner, who represents Ohio’s 25th Senate District and is a history professor at Cuyahoga Community College. Turner, viewed as a rising star in the party, joined in with new ideas.

As April passed, there was a sense that the reform movement had traction. With the Mason and Zanotti forces joined, the reformers had party insiders and outsiders, some Republicans with money to back a campaign and, more than anything, one voice and a single, evolving plan.

Then, a political grenade landed.

On May 4, Fudge called a news conference outside the county Administration Building.

She insinuated that the reformers had met in secret without inviting black leaders. “We want it to be transparent, inclusive, and we want all the stakeholders at the table,” Fudge said. Among those at her side were Jackson and Pinkney.

It was a troublesome moment for the reformers.

“I was shocked,” Zanotti said.

Fudge and Jackson – because of the jobs they hold – are considered the county’s main black leaders, and many black Democrats follow their lead.

The reformers again invited Fudge and Jackson. This time Fudge agreed to meet with the Mason-Zanotti group and bring others with her, including Greene and union leader Applegate.

Reform group members thought Fudge’s involvement was a needed breakthrough even though it has never been clear whether Fudge – who declined to comment for this story and others on reform – ever embraced the idea of changing government. Greene, a reluctant participant, said she and Fudge hoped to find common ground with the reformers.

The Mason-Zanotti group had intentionally left two parts of its proposed charter unfinished. Members said they knew the structure of government and a statement of principles about reform would be hotly debated, so they stalled on those points until more black leaders joined in.

By now it was May, and reformers not only had to hammer out the charter – the document laying out how a new government would work – but they also needed to gather more than 40,000 signatures of registered voters within two months to get reform on the November ballot.

Fudge chaired the first meeting she attended on May 18. After everyone introduced themselves, several said why county structure should be changed.

Greene was soon skeptical, particularly about any reform that could give voice to Republicans.

“As I listened to them expound on the subject, I asked, is this really about government reform or about political reform, because the structure of government should not be changed to give inroad to one party or another,” Greene wrote in a recent e-mail.

Fudge reiterated Jackson’s concern: The group needed to discuss underlying social issues like poverty and education and not just focus on structure.

The group divided in two – one to work on a statement of principles and the other on the structure of government. Both groups included black leaders.

For the principles, the group referred to the President’s Council report that Jackson had commissioned while council president.

Members zeroed in on economic development and equity.

“To ensure a sustainable future, county government must ensure that all communities and the full diversity of its people have mutual voice in the management and distribution of and equitable benefit from county resources,” part of the three pages of principles read.

The structure group debated which elected positions should be wiped away. Some, including Mason, wanted to maintain several elected offices. They argued that black voters might embrace reform if they had offices to run for.

Others wanted to erase them all, or keep only the prosecutor, an idea that prompted Greene – who would lose her job as recorder under that structure – to ask why Mason would retain his job.

Greene and Fudge also questioned the 11 proposed districts for a county council.

Reformers said the districts were designed so that four of them had a solid majority of black voters to assure that black leaders would be in county government.

Bob Dykes, a white Rocky River pollster, had drawn up the districts. In late May, after Fudge and Greene raised concerns, he sent his maps to Larry Brisker, a black Beachwood pollster, who “ballparked” the numbers and said they looked good.

“I talked to Greene and shared my opinions with her,” Brisker said recently. “She let me know those ballpark figures were not of interest to her. Not because they were ballpark, but because she didn’t seem interested in any information.”

Both reform sub-groups met several times. They came back together June 1 for a meeting that Fudge briefly chaired before excusing herself, saying she was needed in Washington, D.C. She said her schedule would probably prevent her from attending more meetings.

After Fudge left, the group went around the room and each person expressed his or her views on the final plan. When it was Greene’s turn, she said the plan would be bad for black people.

There were no guarantees any blacks would be elected, despite black majority districts. “Why would the black community go backward when never before in the more than 200-year history of the county have we had two countywide elected officials!” Greene recounted in an e-mail to The Plain Dealer, referring to herself and Peter Lawson Jones.

Greene also said recently she opposed reform because the structure was a “done deal prior to my becoming involved. The group wanted a sign-off on what they had already decided . . . not to continue debate.”

And finally, Greene said she told the reform group a story about an older black woman who had recently approached her. The woman asked Greene who she was and when Greene told her, the woman told Greene how proud she was of her being in office.

“That was the final piece that solidified my position on this “reform,” ” Greene said.

Greene left the meeting after she spoke. Several there that day said they were stunned and described Greene’s departure as angry and unexpected. That night, at least two members of the reform group – attorney Steve Kaufman and Turner – reached out to her, Greene said.

Greene said she declined when Kaufman asked her to come back to the group. Turner left a message asking if Greene was all right.

“I returned the call with a “what do you mean, am I all right?” ” Greene said. “I am just fine.”

Still, many in the group believed Fudge, Applegate and other newcomers were on board.

The next day, about 10 people who had been working on reform gathered at Parma Heights City Hall for a final marathon. They spent nine hours going over the charter line by line, hashing out final details.

When it was over, Applegate said she hadn’t expected to like the people in the Mason-Zanotti group and was surprised that she did, according to several in attendance.

On June 4, the union leader sent an e-mail to Zanotti, asking for his reaction to an attached news release she planned to send out the next day.

“The process ended up inclusive and great progress was made in arriving at consensus,” the release said. “The result is a proposal that addresses the concerns raised by critics over the years as well as the current need for better facilitation of economic development.”

Zanotti and others were thrilled. What could have fallen apart in bitter divisiveness appeared to be roaring forward with unity.

But then everything changed.

Applegate never issued the release.

“She did a complete 180 on us,” Zanotti said recently.

On June 10, local AFL-CIO leadership voted to oppose reform.

Applegate later called to explain, Zanotti said. “She basically said the unions were concerned about protecting their friends – Jimmy [Commissioner Dimora] and Frank [Auditor Russo] – and the other elected officials.”

Applegate said recently that it took some distance from the group to realize that the reform plan was wrong.

“We met people so involved, so committed, so passionate about their project that it was hard to say no to them,” she said.

Within days of Applegate’s change of heart, the Call & Post reported that Fudge also opposed changing the structure of county government.

That’s also about the time when the weekly paper ran the editorial saying that Nina Turner was “carrying water for white folks.” And the Cleveland NAACP passed a resolution opposing the plan.

It was a buzz kill for the reformers, and some started to wonder whether they could gather the needed signatures to put reform on the ballot.

If they were going to make it, they needed more money. By June 16, the group had raised about $20,000. It needed at least $100,000.

“Meaningful reform is needed if we are to compete in a rapidly changing world,” former Shaker Heights Mayor Judy Rawson wrote in an e-mail to community leaders, asking them to kick in $500 to $1,000. “The county and city, acting together, could do so much more to chart a strong, collaborative vision for our future. The time for reform is NOW.”

Within two weeks, the group had its money. Most, $100,000, came from the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a regional chamber of commerce.

Commissioner Jones, who opposes the Mason-Zanotti reform, conceded at the time that the business community’s support would help get reform onto the fall ballot. But Jones had a plan of his own.

On July 9, he announced that he and Commissioner Tim Hagan would put something on the ballot to compete with the Mason-Zanotti plan, which they considered rushed and parochial.

Unlike the Mason-Zanotti group, commissioners needn’t worry about gathering signatures. They have the authority to put issues on the ballot.

On July 10, the Mason-Zanotti group submitted nearly twice the number of signatures needed to the Board of Elections to make the ballot.

Six days later, Jones and Hagan voted their countermeasure on the ballot as well. Instead of putting forward a specific plan, the commissioners asked voters to create a 15-member charter review commission that would study reform – again.

More than a decade ago, a similar process was launched after a 1995 task force recommended wholesale restructuring of government. But commissioners at the time – including Hagan – refused to put the reform recommendation on the ballot. Hagan said there was no support for it.

Backers of the Mason-Zanotti group suspect the same thing will happen now if voters pass the Jones-Hagan plan. But Jones said that’s impossible because charter commission members would be elected. The Ohio Constitution requires that any proposal made by an elected panel gets on a ballot.

On Aug. 8, a first slate of 15 candidates running for the charter commission was announced. Applegate heads the group.

On Aug. 11, a second slate of candidates emerged, led by Tom Kelly, a Lakewood Democrat and radio host. Kelly’s group supports the Mason-Zanotti plan, but its members say they are running in case it is defeated.

It’s unclear what will happen if voters in November approve both the Mason-Zanotti reform and the Jones-Hagan study.

Regardless, the split in the party appears to be deepening. Even now, four months later, Turner declines to name who threatened her with an “anti-Nina campaign.”

“I don’t think that will help the situation,” said Turner, who is one of at least seven black co-chairs of the Mason-Zanotti reform push.

Only one is an elected official – Shaker Heights Councilman Earl Williams, a lawyer for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. The rest are professionals, including April Miller Boise, the partner in charge of the Cleveland Thompson Hine law office.

Eddie Taylor, chairman of the Presidents” Council – the group that analyzed regionalism for Mayor Jackson a few years ago – hinted recently that his organization may take a stand on county reform.

“We don’t usually engage in political discourse, but if there is an opportunity to support economic development in a meaningful way . . . we might be compelled to support some notion that utilizes this reform plan for those purposes,” Taylor said.

Turner, meanwhile, said those who threatened her should know that she appreciates the struggles of those who came before her.

“I’m very much cognizant of that, but we are in the 21st century and we must find a different way to communicate,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist.”

Turner rejects arguments that the plan excludes blacks or was rushed. And if it is the FBI corruption probe that ultimately draws voter interest, so be it, she said.

“We have a region that is dying,” she said. “If this was the impetus that makes us come together to change the trajectory of the county, then by God, we have to do that.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

agarrett@plaind.com, 216-999-4814

BOX 1:

Cuyahoga County reform: How we got the story

Shortly after Plain Dealer reporter Amanda Garrett began reporting on the politics of Cuyahoga County reform, it became clear that many of those involved in the process had shifted position over time.

She set about constructing a timeline that looked at the political evolution of the plan, and the opposition to it.

Much of the plan evolved in closed-door meetings. Garrett relied on recollections, notes and e-mails of more than two dozen supporters and opponents to re-create what happened.

Many of those not identified in the story spoke on condition that their names not be used. All events described are based on multiple sources.

BOX 2:

Cuyahoga County reform issues on the November ballot

Cuyahoga County voters in November can choose between two reform issues, or vote for both:

Issue 6: This is what the group led by Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti and County Prosecutor William Mason came up with. It eliminates the three county commissioners and all nonjudicial elected offices except for the prosecutor and treasurer. Running the county would be an elected county executive and 11-member council. Structure would work much like a mayoral form of government. Supporters say a county executive will bring accountability to government and spur economic development.

Issue 5: Cuyahoga County Commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan support an alternative to reform. It’s not a different plan but would create a 15-member commission to further study the idea and come up with a proposed charter. The campaign is led by a heavily Democratic, labor-leaning slate. There is a complication. A bipartisan, largely Republican group calling itself the Citizens Reform Association is running its own slate of candidates to sit on the charter commission, if voters create one. This group supports the Mason-Zanotti reform, but if voters don’t pass it, this slate of candidates wants to join in the debate over an alternative.

BOX 3:

Harriet Applegate’s news release on Cuyahoga County reform plan that was never issued

The following is a news release on the Cuyahoga County reform plan that labor leader Harriet Applegate said she would put out on June 5. It was never issued:

The county reform proposal being released today represents good progress in the hammering out of a consensus document. Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO, was invited by Congresswoman Marcia Fudge to join the ongoing conversation about reform and the working committee was very welcoming of new input. The process ended up inclusive and great progress was made in arriving at consensus. The result is a proposal that addresses the concerns raised by critics over the years as well as the current need for better facilitation of economic development.

“It is important to have the kind of reform that our county needs. Equally important are the issues of timing, coalitions and respect for where people are coming from,” she added. “That is why a united front of leaders is so important. All major sectors of the county, including the business community and key African-American leaders along with labor need to be supportive in order for this to pass. Passing such sweeping change will be challenging so it is critical that leaders work in tandem to educate their people about what is in this proposal and why it is needed,” she said.

Many feel that if you don’t like the way things are, you vote in people who will change things, but what this approach does not take into consideration is how much more county government could do. The argument to dramatically alter our system of government is fundamentally an economic one. “We need to increase opportunity and bring jobs to our county,” she added, “and one good way to facilitate that is to have policy, people and a plan in place to aggressively go out and seek jobs and investment. That’s what this proposal does.”

Mayor Jackson was Re-Elected, But Will He Lose Power to the County Executive? Plain Dealer/NEOMG November 08, 2009

Election night was sweet for Frank Jackson: Voters re-elected him mayor of Cleveland and cleared the way for a casino, hoping to deliver an economic jackpot for his financially strapped city.

But voters also handed Jackson – and all the Cleveland mayors who will come after – a political test.

Come 2011, the mayor of Cleveland may no longer be the most powerful elected official in Northeast Ohio. That job is likely to pass to the Cuyahoga County executive, a position created by Issue 6, the charter measure that voters overwhelmingly approved last week to reform county government.

Jackson, as mayor, will still represent a shrinking city of about 430,000. He’ll still be responsible for balancing the city’s budget, making sure the streets are plowed and planning Cleveland’s future.

But he’ll have to do it alongside a county executive who represents three times the population – 1.3 million people, including the mayor’s own constituents. Some say the number of people the executive represents would make that person the most powerful single elected official in the state other than the governor.

How will the relationship between the mayor and county executive work?

“There’s intense speculation on who is going to be the spokesman for the region,” said economist Edward “Ned” Hill, dean of the urban-affairs college at Cleveland State University.

That could shift over time, depending on who holds the mayor and county executive jobs, he said, and it may come down to who can get things done.

Jackson – who steadfastly opposed Issue 6 – declined to comment for this story. It will be almost another year before the county executive is chosen. Political insiders already are jockeying to see what names get on the ballot.

Whoever wins will end up tethered to Jackson in a sort of three-legged race. They don’t have a choice. Each needs the other to better the county and the city. It’s up to them to make it work.

“The recognition of that symbiosis is pivotal,” said David Abbott, executive director of the George Gund Foundation and a former county administrator.

The county executive, for example, needs to work with the mayor to accomplish large-scale projects that affect the region, like Gateway and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Abbott said.

And the mayor needs to work with the executive to receive tens of millions of local, state and federal dollars that support the city’s budget and social services, he said.

Despite Jackson’s opposition to Issue 6, many believe the mayor will work with the county executive because that’s what voters want, said Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc. and a former Cleveland planning director. Both he and Abbott have been mentioned as possibilities for the county executive slot.

But a future mayor may not cooperate with a county executive.

“Instead of a three-legged race, it could look more like two scorpions in a bottle,” CSU’s Hill said.

Allegheny County, Pittsburgh battle it out

Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, switched to a county executive form of government in 2000. And for the first time since the Great Depression, the blue-collar Pennsylvania county elected a Republican to a countywide position.

Voters picked James C. Roddey, a local businessman, to serve as their county executive.

It was awkward at first, Roddey recalled during a phone interview. “Did the Pittsburgh mayor know I had more power than he did? Probably . . . but he didn’t really accept that.”

The two didn’t get along, but it didn’t matter early on, said Joseph Sabino Mistick, a law professor at Duquesne University and a Pittsburgh political columnist. Because Roddey was a Republican, “he had no allegiance to city leadership” and could go about reforms, said Mistick, a Democrat.

Roddey said he launched the first property reassessments in 30 years and slashed the county work force from 7,000 to 5,500, turning a $36 million budget deficit into a $4 million surplus within four years.

Roddey said he lost his bid for a second term because of voter anger over higher property taxes. He maintains his time in office set the region on the right course.

Since then, Mistick said, everyone has recognized that the real power lies with the county executive.

The Pittsburgh area – which had no clout – now commands power that puts it in the same league as Philadelphia.

“And that’s good for us because we’re able to demand attention,” Mistick said.

Meanwhile, tensions between subsequent county executives and Pittsburgh mayors have emerged.

“It’s fair to say our current mayor and executive started off on better terms than previous,” Mistick said. “But a multitude of little turf battles have had a cumulative effect. While they publicly still support each other, they are estranged.”

Summit, Akron working together

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic has spent 30 years working with Summit County executives and said he’s gotten along with most of them.

Sometimes the city/county partnership hasn’t worked – about 15 years ago, the county executive was so tied up with a self-interested County Council that he didn’t have time for the city, Plusquellic said.

But other times that partnership has made all the difference, such as when the city and county recently paired up to save 3,100 jobs at Goodyear.

Plusquellic said that when he heard the jobs were in jeopardy, he called Summit County Executive Russ Pry. Although the jobs were in Akron, Plusquellic printed out a list of home addresses showing hundreds of people in surrounding suburbs who would lose their work.

The county and the city united and saved the jobs.

The outspoken mayor, who has carved out a national reputation for innovative accomplishments, urged politicians in Cuyahoga County to put away their pettiness. He said it’s been holding back Cleveland, Akron and the region for too long. “I don’t think anybody should be looking down their noses at anyone who wants to bring progress,” he said.

“If you have someone in office who cares more about someone overshadowing him than moving forward or someone who complains about ‘that darn county executive bringing in 10,000 jobs and then taking credit’ … well, that’s a pretty sick person,” Plusquellic said. “Stop the jealousy. Stop the greed. I don’t care which side of the river you’re on up there, you have to get past this.”

News researcher Tonya Sams contributed to this report.

County Government Reform is Likely to Happen in Stages Plain Dealer/NEOMG November 9, 2009

The revolution will arrive in waves.

In January 2011, a new Cuyahoga County Council will meet, its 11 members bucking commissioners’ habit of staid rubber-stamping to jostle and debate. The first Cuyahoga County executive will take over, and with 1.3 million people to serve, become the second most powerful leader in Ohio.

By June, a regional group will present a five-year plan to promote economic development.

Other more far-reaching changes are demanded in the governing charter that county voters approved Tuesday. Yet some of those changes could take years – even decades – and will require continual vigilance by voters, experts say.

Experts also say that charters have worked in other counties, including in neighboring Summit, and five other similar-size counties nationwide, by giving the government home-rule powers, rather than restricting it to the rights outlined by the state.

“You’ll see immediately some real changes in the way the county operates,” said attorney Eugene Kramer, who wrote the Cuyahoga charter. “But a great deal depends on who gets elected. . . . It won’t be enough to say, ‘I voted, that’s the end of it.’ People have to pay attention.”

Voters paid attention this fall to decipher two competing reform plans.

They rejected the county commissioners’ measure to create a panel that would craft a new form of government and, instead, voted 2 to 1 to enact a new charter, a sort of constitution for the county.

That document calls for 11 council members, each representing a geographic district, as well as an elected prosecutor, and an elected executive. The elected offices of auditor, clerk of courts, coroner, engineer, recorder, sheriff and treasurer will be abolished to make way for administrators appointed by the executive.

The reform makes the government more streamlined, since the executive will be responsible for virtually all services. But it also makes it a bit messier, since the council must approve spending.

County Council members will be beholden to their constituents and so, will likely fight for projects for their geographic districts. Members will probably debate more. They may have to read legislation more than once.

That system ensures checks and balances, said Joel Lieske, a political science professor at Cleveland State University.

“The county commissioner system was kind of speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil,” Lieske said. “The county has lacked leadership.”

In the first few months under the charter, council members are expected to tackle a code of ethics and campaign finance reform. They will also standardize hiring practices and eliminate unnecessary jobs. And by the end of the year, the council will pass its first annual budget.

Meanwhile, the county executive will run the day-to-day county operations. The executive will also work with the economic development commission (made up of representatives from Cleveland, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority, the Cuyahoga County Mayors and Managers Association, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the North Shore Federation of Labor and a nonprofit organization) to attract new business to the county.

Having one leader instead of three can make it easier to accomplish goals, said Stephen Brooks, the associate director of the Ray Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

“You have a single person who can get involved with the negotiations that need to be done and really push things through,” he said.

The leader can work hand in hand with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, as well as Summit County Executive Russell Pry. He or she can urge progress from a bully pulpit and encourage regionalism by offering financial incentives to municipalities that collaborate.

Some experts doubt any county structure can have much impact on economic development.

“It’s extremely wishful thinking,” said Joseph White, the director of the Center for Policy Studies at Case Western Reserve University.

White said development depends much more on geography, the global marketplace and the education of the work force.

Regardless, White and others believe the success of the new government depends on who gets elected.

“Who you elect to that position now has become much more important than past leadership,” Brooks said. “The vote you make for the county executive is the vote that you’re making for the county.”

In Summit County, Pry has partnered with Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic to combine building departments and police operations, keep the Goodyear headquarters in Akron and create a $70 million BioInnovation Institute that involves regional hospitals, the University of Akron and the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

“There are synergies you can take advantage of in this system,” said Pry, who concentrates on attracting and keeping jobs, since without jobs, he has more problems with the rest of his budget.

Pry is the county’s fourth executive since its charter took hold in 1980.

But he is one of the first Summit executives to flex the charter’s muscle, using powers written in the document.

Still, because Summit County government has more elected officials than Cuyahoga, it’s hard to compare the counties, said Janice Patterson of the Cuyahoga Area League of Women Voters.

She listed five other counties – Palm Beach and Hillsborough (Tampa), Fla.; Allegheny, Pa. (Pittsburgh); Oakland, Mich. (Pontiac); and Hennepin, Minn. (Minneapolis) – which have populations within 100,000 residents of Cuyahoga’s.

All have charters, Patterson said. Which makes it fitting that Cuyahoga has one now too.

“There are sweeping changes that have to take place,” she said. “So to those who are paying attention, I think that will be pretty noticeable and pretty interesting.”

New Ohio House Speaker, Armond Budish, Vows to Push For Cities; Regionalism Plain Dealer January 5, 2009

Columbus – Ohio’s big cities could see special treatment from the state with income tax breaks on new jobs, more money for school construction and free broadband services for urban businesses under a plan unveiled Monday by new Democratic House Speaker Armond Budish.

However, those potential freebies wouldn’t come without a price – Ohio’s urban areas would have to participate in state purchasing cooperatives and abide by the results of a study focusing on whether regionalizing services such as fire and trash pickup would save public dollars.

Cities also would have to match the income tax break on newly created jobs with their own municipal tax breaks.

The push for regionalism by the first House speaker from Northeast Ohio in more than 70 years could provide a needed spark for local leaders, who have promoted regionalism for years but made little progress. Budish is the first powerful lawmaker in Columbus to take the lead on the idea.

During his opening remarks to the 99-member House, now controlled by Democrats for the first time in 14 years, the Beachwood Democrat wasted no time pushing an agenda for urban areas that he said the Republican-controlled legislature has overlooked.

Budish called specifically for a compact between the state and major cities with special incentives in exchange for what would be an eventual move toward more regionalism.

“I don’t anticipate forcing any cities to do anything, but with incentives and review, there may be a number of services that can be offered more efficiently by groups of cities or regions getting together,” Budish told reporters after his speech, which officially kicked off the 128th General Assembly.

The 55-year-old Democrat also pledged to step up the use of successful tax credit programs such as those targeted at green businesses, new technologies and innovative businesses. He offered no details on how any of these plans would be paid for, saying all such conversations would take place when lawmakers discuss Ohio’s next operating budget this spring.

New House Minority Leader Rep. Bill Batchelder, a Medina Republican and well-known fiscal conservative, sounded open to the idea of targeted tax incentives and special help for cities.

“I might or might not agree with the policy recommendations he is making, but we simply have to save the cities,” he said. “What we have to do is run a far more constructive program for the cities, we have to get law and order back in the cities and have to do things in the schools that will get the middle class to come back to the cities.”

Keith Dailey, spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland, said “there were a number of worthy ideas” put forth by Budish, including the idea of increased collaboration among regions.

“The governor has been successful taking that approach with the University System of Ohio in looking to increase efficiencies and find cost savings,” said Dailey.

Budish’s offer to work with cities was a welcome change for local leaders who in recent years felt ignored by the General Assembly in favor of rural communities. The Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association has already overwhelmingly agreed to the concept of a regionalism plan, though details still need to be worked out. So, too, have the mayors of Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown.

But mayors did express concern about Budish’s call for cities to waive municipal income taxes for several years as part of the deal.

“We look forward to working with Speaker Budish and have already talked about scheduling periodic meetings with him to discuss issues important to Cleveland,” Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in a statement. “While we are enthusiastic about discussing the particulars in his plan, we would be remiss not to include our concern about the waiver of local income taxes.”

Pepper Pike Mayor Bruce Akers also applauded Budish but wants more details.

“I am definitely for the whole concept of regionalism, but obviously the devil is in the details, so I would like to know more,” Akers said in an interview.

Budish rolled out his urban agenda on the most ceremonial of days for state lawmakers as oaths of office were delivered on the House floor by Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Moyer to groups of 11 lawmakers at a time.

On the Senate side, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Stratton did the honors for Republicans, who dominate the chamber, 21-12. Appeals Court Judge Joe Vukovich swore in the Senate Democrats.

Thirty-three House members were sworn in for the first time.

Regionalism in Louisville Working, But Black Political Power Dwindles Plain Dealer/NEOMG August 26, 2007

A REGION UNITING?

Optimism is in rich supply in the “Big Lou” these days, and why not?

Louisville, Ky., is rapidly reclaiming its waterfront, replacing scrap yards with parkland. New condos and historic restorations are awakening a once-sleepy downtown, and a new skyscraper is on the way.

Employers are investing, and how. Last year, UPS announced a $1 billion expansion of its distribution hub at Louisville International Airport, promising 5,000 new jobs.

Local leaders point to the projects and progress as testimonials to their metro government, America’s first city-county merger in 30 years.

“It gave me the chance to set an agenda for the whole region,” said Jerry Abramson, Louisville’s outgoing mayor and an architect of the merger. “If you start pitching yourself as a region, if you start seeing yourself as a region, you can be very, very successful.”

Regional cooperation, Abramson and others say, made complex projects and far-sighted planning go down as smooth as the bourbon that famously flows from local distilleries.

Many black leaders find the price hard to swallow. A bigger, busier Louisville is also notably whiter, and that equates to less black political power. Regionalism advocates took advantage of a voting system that allowed them to roll over black opposition.

Yet representatives of struggling regions flock to northern Kentucky to see a model of reinvention. As a fourth installment in its “Region Uniting?” series, The Plain Dealer looks at what the blueprint for “America’s newest city” might offer to our own struggling region.

Are there lessons we might learn? Strategies we might follow? At the very least, does Louisville’s daring move offer our own advocates for regional cooperation reasons to keep trying?

In the beginning

With a bold vote in 2000, residents of Louisville and surrounding Jefferson County narrowly approved a city-county merger that, when completed in 2003, catapulted Louisville from 67th place on the list of America’s largest cities to 16th.

Leading up to the vote, advocates for regional government faced many of the same obstacles and resistance seen in Greater Cleveland.

Leaders in the 90-plus suburbs didn’t want to surrender control or adopt the city’s burdens. Urban black leaders feared that a merger would dilute their city-based political power.

But unlike here, schools in Louisville and its suburbs had merged into one district decades earlier. The city and county also agreed in 1985 to merge several city and county departments, including planning and economic development.

And unlike here, state lawmakers in Kentucky, pushed by the Louisville business community, got involved in a big way. In 1998, they named a task force of all city and county elected officials, 56 in all, to design a new merger plan.

As a proposal came together, key leadership stepped forward to sell it. Kentucky’s senior U.S. senator, Mitch McConnell, joined the pro-merger campaign and vowed to “finish the job.”

Business groups financed a $1 million “Say Yes to Unity” campaign that left little to chance. When late tracking polls identified women aged 24 to 35 as anti-merger, TV and radio ads stressed that merger would attract jobs to “keep our babies at home.”

Merger advocates also dodged a contentious issue. Suburbs were allowed to remain independent. They could keep their police, government and recreation programs, yet still vote for Metro mayor and council. Suburban opposition faded, and blacks lost a key anti-merger ally.

Merger planners tried to soften black opposition. They carved out voting districts that ensured five “safe seats” for blacks on a 26-member Metro Council, in proportion to the black population.

They pledged that city services would not be cut to match lower levels of services in the county. And they stressed that a metro city, united behind one mayor, could attract jobs for everyone.

Still, Louisville Urban League President Benjamin Richmond stood almost alone urging blacks to accept a smaller share of a growing pie. Young black professionals rallied to his side, but every elected black official in the city and county opposed merger. About 70 percent of black voters rejected the idea.

But in the end, black voters lacked the numbers to defeat a plan that needed only a single countywide majority vote to re-create the government.

“Merger dissolved the African-American power base,” said Darryl Owens, a black Kentucky state representative from “old city” Louisville. “It lessens our political influence. Most people like to have influence. That makes sure your issues get addressed.”

Lessons for here

Experts say a Louisville-style merger could not easily happen in a strong home-rule state like Ohio. Cuyahoga County would need the endorsement of every community involved, including Cleveland, which is nearly 60 percent black.

And so high is black mistrust of regional government, experts say, that no black-majority city in America has ever merged with its home county. Even basic regionalism strategies, like tax sharing and regional planning, face higher hurdles in regions of great diversity.

Last month, a leading black business group in Northeast Ohio, the President’s Council, released a review of regionalism that advises tiptoeing into the uncharted waters.

The report acknowledges the need for regional cooperation but insists that century-old government structures be left untouched.

The study, directed by John Powell, an Ohio State University social scientist who studies regionalism and its impact on minority communities, trumpets a theme: Equity. It calls for regional magnet schools, tax sharing and anti-sprawl measures.

Powell said the authors were writing to their audience. Any mention of consolidation would kill discussion in the black community, he said, just as a suggestion to regionalize schools would scare off Solon, Brecksville and Rocky River.

“First, you have to build some confidence,” he said.

Barbara Shanklin understands the trepidation, and the possibilities. She opposed merger as a black member of the Louisville City Council and now sits beside representatives of suburbs and farm country on the Metro Council.

With regional resources pooled, her majority-black district suddenly has money for youth programs it once could not afford, Shanklin said. And it benefits from something she never imagined.

At times, when her discretionary money has run low, representative of other, wealthier districts passed resources her way. She has done the same for others.

“When we first merged, everybody looked out for their own area,” she said. “Now, people on this council help each other. It’s, like, regionalism.”