As I prepare to send this article off to the web, I read in the Sunday Plain Dealer of the death of Ed Hauser at the early age of 47 years.

If that isn’t tragic enough, the loss of his voice and his activism makes my thoughts below even more sad for me and Cleveland.

I saw and talked with Ed at meetings in the past, particularly at the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.  He was always humble but noble in his pursuits.

His attention to detail, filming of public meetings and unwillingness to be cowed or embarrassed by the disdain and officiousness of elected and appointed officials made him not just a thorn in the side of officials who don’t easily countenance the public.  He gave them worry and some caution.

To them he was often a nuisance.  That’s the role of a real citizen.

Ed was quiet but persistent.

I was one of I assume many that he took personally to view Whiskey Island to reveal its potential and why he so desperately wanted it saved, as I hope now it will be forever.

He was a civic activist of the Nader tradition – a selfless “citizen” of which we have so few and need so many.  That makes him a treasure lost before his tasks were completed.  Who will pick up Ed's mantle?

 

Cleveland's Death Rattle

Where are the Leaders as Cleveland sinks deeper into the quicksand of corruption, economic depression and failed governance?

The Plain Dealer a week ago had a round-up of investigations, raids and convictions of politicians, local and at the state level.

It told the story of the problems that have dominated the pages of The Plain Dealer in recent times.

Near the end of the piece, possibly to give some semblance of hope, the report had something to balance out the tragic news that preceded it...

“So should we conclude that Northeast Ohio’s integrity has been bought and sold? Are leaders here all corrupt? Is the region doomed to a fate in which the phrase ‘Greater Cleveland’ becomes synonymous with corruption the way Tammany Hall besmirched New York?” it read.

Then the report quoted Ronn Richard, president of the powerful and moneyed Cleveland Foundation.  He’s an optimist, we’re told.  You and I would be optimists too if we were earning Richard’s net income of $401,000 (2006 figure) and had more than a billion dollars to give to pleaders.

Richard gave us a chamber of commerce pep talk about the area’s leadership...

“There are a lot of people who work in city and county government, and a very, very small percentage of them are crooked. We work with City Hall and the County Commissioners almost daily, and there are a lot of good people moving the ball forward,” said Richard.

I agree that the corrupt number is small.  However, I disagree strongly that the ball is moving forward much, if at all.

What strikes me, however, is that there has been no Leadership voice from the corporate community that has been raised with honesty.  And if Richard works daily – as I don’t doubt – with City Hall and the commissioners, why hasn’t he noticed the corruption and the sweet deals that have been a hallmark of Cleveland government for the last 20 years?

I understand that you can’t call people crooks without being able to back it up.

I don’t expect Richard to yell, “Crooks at City Hall” at his annual meeting.

But certainly Richard and many, many other corporate leaders have known that games were being played by politicians here and at an exceedingly high level.

Why didn’t they speak out?  Do something?

Because the game was being played to their overall approval.

That’s  why.

Through the 1980s, when massive subsidies were given indiscriminately by Mayor George Voinovich and Council President George Forbes, it was Cleveland Tomorrow’s top corporate leadership, including the Cleveland Foundation, that was priming the pump and cheerleading the give-aways.

The Big Guys were enjoying massive subsidies to downtown developers with the infrastructure dollars pouring into Playhouse Square and the Warehouse District, the stadiums and arena, Rock Hall, the loser Waterfront rapid line and debt-laden garages to service these facilities, not to mention gifts to other parts of downtown.

There was no outcry – not even a yelp – about the use of resources downtown and the sparse use of government funds for neighborhoods, long neglected.

No one pointed a finger as Thomas Westrop, then of Women’s Federal Bank and a City Planning Commission member, did of comparing what was happening during similar times in the 1960s.  Corporate leaders at that time pushed an ill-conceived and self-serving urban renewal program.  Westrop said...

“For some, the urban renewal program worked very well, indeed, the hospitals and educational institutions have been constructed and enlarged.  So have commercial and industrial interests and many service organizations, all with the help of urban renewal dollars.”

Then Westrop told a truth you couldn’t hear today with the best of ears...

“I wish I could believe that all of this was accidental and brought about by the inefficiency of well-meaning people – but I just can’t.  The truth, it seems to me, is that it was planned that way.”

Now there was a civic leader who spoke some truth about his own class.

But there is no one around here today who speaks truth to power.  And that’s just the ingredient the city and county sorely needs now.

The Plain Dealer plays the game, too, depending upon corporate public relations interests rather than encouraging voices of dissent.  Yet, they cry about the cynicism toward the paper.  People do not see the PD as representative of the ordinary person.  It would be hard to make that leap.

In the past 20 years, I know of no business voice that expressed ANY concern about the direction of the use of public resources.  There has certainly been much evidence of its misuse.

You can’t tell me that these Leaders didn’t know that games were being played when Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich gave Dick Jacobs and the Ratners hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that didn’t have to be paid back typically for 20 years and, most often, at no or very low interest.

Voinovich, with Cleveland City Council President George Forbes, gave full-tax abatements for 20 years on major downtown projects.  No business leader or foundation head nor The Plain Dealer uttered a word of caution.  Nor did they question whether 20 years was too long to give away tax revenues.

Could they have been so ill-informed?  Or was it that they saw corporate interests as their interests?  Yes, I believe they did.

And when Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan and Mayor Michael White went to Columbus to get the entire Gateway project area and eventually the Browns Stadium fully tax-exempt forever, nobody in any sector of power said anything, raised any questions.

I’m sorry.  One did.  Richard Siegel, an attorney, did.  In Columbus before the legislature during the Gateway debate.  Then, so upset about the lack of response, he started the Free Times.  Unfortunately, he died soon after and his dissenting voice was silenced, as was the Free Times.

The rest had to know that the property taxes forgiven, now in the tens of millions of dollars, came mostly at the expense of the struggling Cleveland public schools.

Did you hear a Dick Jacobs, or an Al Lerner, or then head of the Cleveland Foundation Steve Minter, offer any voice of concern?  Of caution?  NO.

Our so-called private leadership has been MUTE AND SILENT.

The legal corruption of the past 20 years makes the deals under investigation against County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and County Auditor Frank Russo seem piddling – at least as it now appears – in comparison.

Two quick examples.  Back in 1989, I reported that Dick Jacobs hired a city hall hack who claimed to be a relative of Forbes.  He gave contracts to this hack who had been disciplined during the Voinovich administration for lying and misleading his boss and other failures of “poor judgment.”

Jacobs, who had just gotten a full 20-year tax abatement and a $20-million, 20-year interest free loan, gave the hack $1 million in contracts.  The contracts were for demolition and asbestos removal, no less.  Not a word of it made The Plain Dealer.  No complaints anywhere.

About the same time, a deal for a parking garage under Mall A (right in front of the Marriott Hotel) was taken from a developer to be given to Jacobs.  The city had to use legal counsel to make this change.  Mayor Voinovich hired his former law firm of Calfee, Halter & Griswold at a price that was $443,000.

Both Voinovich and Forbes were also in on the deal at Chagrin Highlands, helping their friends.  A former partner of Voinovich’s was the lead promoter and board member of Figgie Corp., the original developer.  Unbeknownst to the public, Forbes had wrangled Jacobs into the deal and he now is prime manager of Chagrin Highlands.  Eaton Corp. will slip out of the city to this area soon to the chagrin apparently of many big shots.

In court documents an unidentified person commented, indicative of the way these people depend upon The Plain Dealer’s cooperation... “My earliest reading was right. Alex (Machaskee, then PD publisher) is not going to go up against the mayor over H. F. (Harry Figgie).  There was no upside to the PD taking on the mayor over H. F.”  Possibly, this was about Mayor White pursuing the legal case and holding up the project.

The wheelers and dealers had to know about these sweet deals.  And many, many more.

Yet, no one spoke out.  Our supposed civic leaders don’t act as proper citizens and make their views known.  They are the opposite of the protagonist of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.”  They protect... but not the public.

Are there none who saw folly in Commissioners Hagan and Dimora’s purchase of the East 9th Street corner property from Jacobs, who had allowed it to lie vacant for years?

Presently, don’t some see the selection of the Ratner-Forest City Land (or cliff, as some wry critics call it) to build that proposed new convention center as a joke?  Maybe a $1 billion joke?

Do you see one corporate leader who will speak out and say what’s obvious or should be to anyone watching this community?

They’re too interested in maybe getting a crumb themselves some day.

So don’t talk about Cleveland Leadership without keeping in mind that civic responsibility doesn’t even exist in Cleveland...  once the most progressive city in America, according to Lincoln Steffens.  He knew.

So, just as now we are finding that there were no corporate whistleblowers to warn against the financial calamity facing us nationally, there are absolutely no voices or whistleblowers locally, as Cleveland continues to sink into its quicksand.

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ADDENDUM...  After completing this piece this, I read Dan T. Moore’s plea in The Plain Dealer’s op-ed pages entitled, “Don’t give up on National City.”

Here is an example of what I was trying to say above.  Moore, a prominent businessman, spoke out.  He wants to rally and provoke others here to not accept the death of National City Bank simply as a fait accompli.

No one seems to know the truth about why National City was allowed to be taken by Pittsburgh’s PNC Financial, accepting it without question and a fight... this seems to be a Cleveland habit of giving up.

Even unsuccessful, I think Moore’s call to arms could be a wakeup call to Cleveland.

We don’t seem to be getting that impetus from City Hall or anywhere else for that matter.