Lanci plans statewide newspaper, Lanci Tribune

Ken Lanci isn’t done. The vanquished challenger from Cleveland’s mayoral race is trying to launch a statewide newspaper named after himself.

The Lanci Tribune, which began life as a campaign screed wrapped around the cover of Scene, posted ads for freelance journalists in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo on CareerBuilder yesterday. “The focus will be on what the government is or is not doing and the impact it has on the people as well as business,” the ad says.

Lanci’s been thinking about this move since August, when Plain Dealer reporters greeted his candidacy with less respect than he felt it deserved.

“There’s a piece of me thinking about starting my own newspaper,” Lanci told me then, after complaining that PD reporter Leila Atassi had painted him as irresponsible in this story. “And the whole editorial mission is, give the facts. Do not editorialize [in] your stories. Do not print out of context. If you make a statement, what somebody said, you say all of it. That would be the standard. Anybody violates it, they’re out of here.”

Lanci’s resentment of the local press has hardened since.

“Shame on ALL of YOU! Call and Post, Plain Dealer, and Crain’s Cleveland Business, for Not Caring About the Children and the Residents of Cleveland,” read the lead headline on the second edition of the Lanci Tribune (which I saw, gathering dust, at various bars and diners around town after the election). The papers had endorsed incumbent Frank Jackson, and Lanci was mad. On election night, Lanci barred the press from his party, except for one WTAM reporter.

Remember the saying, “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one”? Well, Lanci owns one. His company Consolidated Graphics Group gives him the tools, and his millions gives him the means. Now all he needs are some professional writers with “3-5 years experience writing for a newspaper or magazine” to give his self-titled paper a little polish.

But prospective applicants might want to ask, what’s the mission? Not to editorialize? Or to settle some scores for the boss?

Update, 12/11: The five ads have all disappeared from CareerBuilder, reports Nick Castele of WCPN, though they're still echoing on various sites for freelance writers. Cold feet?

What the mayor’s race means

I feel Roldo’s pain. “A Meaningless Election,” the radical curmudgeon complains about tomorrow’s vote for mayor.

His critique of Mayor Frank Jackson is the best since Michael D. Roberts’ in March. Sadly, Roldo and Roberts are more thorough, credible critics of the mayor than his challenger, Ken Lanci, who’s built his campaign on simplistic blunt-force attacks.

Lanci, who blasts Jackson as a complete failure, isn’t much of an alternative. He’s failed to build a political coalition beyond disgruntled public employees and a motley crew of activists. He hasn’t articulated a governing philosophy beyond religious piety and confidence in his own competence. He’s a thin-skinned, angry grudge-holder. He’d make a terrible, insufferable mayor.

But give Lanci credit: at least he’s given us a mayor’s race. Without him, Jackson would be coasting unopposed to reelection tomorrow with no questions asked.

Instead, Lanci has pushed Jackson to defend his record on the biggest issues in town, including schools, safety and the lakefront. He’s given us a choice -- though not the one Roberts and Roldo would want. And he’s asked questions that will resonate throughout the next four years. Here are three.

1. What if Jackson’s school reforms fail? Lanci has pierced the air of optimism around Jackson’s 2012 school reforms and levy victory. He’s focused on the cold facts: the Cleveland schools still score a big zero on the state report cards.

Lanci dismisses Jackson’s reform agenda of tougher standards for teachers, new specialty schools and plans to dismantle the staff at failing schools. If elected, Lanci would probably let the teachers off the hook.

His alternative is a $40 million expansion of his favorite charity, the mentoring program Project Love. Lanci can seem naïve and self-regarding when he plugs it, and Jackson has dismissed his approach as condescending to mothers and kids. Still, Lanci may be on to something.

The Cleveland schools’ woes have been nearly intractable for decades. Yet Jackson’s reforms need to produce results fast, in time for the levy renewal in three years. A couple more report card Fs, and Jackson’s legacy will be in danger.

If that happens, a massive mentoring program for at-risk inner-city kids may be the only big reform idea left to try. It might look a lot like the renowned Harlem Children’s Zone — or a lot like Project Love.

2. How will the police department change? Lanci is carrying water for the police union on the year’s biggest City Hall debate, the response to last November’s 60-car police chase and fatal shooting. He blames police chief Mike McGrath and safety director Martin Flask for the uncontrolled chase and says he’d fire them if elected.

Under pressure from Lanci, Jackson has said a lot this fall about the chase’s aftermath. He’s gone way beyond his usual line about how he’ll support the police who stayed “inside the box” and followed orders.

Jackson has made it clear he sees the chase as mass insubordination. The mayor views McGrath as reasserting control and discipline.

“Without this police chief there would be no semblance of fairness and justice in the whole thing,” Jackson told Crain’s Cleveland Business. “He stood up against a culture that said there was nothing wrong [with the chase and shootings].”

Neither candidate talks about holding both the police leadership and the rank-and-file accountable. But Lanci’s stance keeps the pressure on Jackson to answer this question: Is disciplining the officers and supervisors for violating policy and procedure enough? Or, if McGrath and Flask are going to stay, how will they improve police training, equipment and communication so that the next chase is handled better?

3. What about the lakefront? Eight years of Jackson, and no construction cranes on the lakefront. Lanci scoffs at the mayor’s plan to develop a new neighborhood along North Coast Harbor. It won’t happen, he says, just like all the past lakefront plans haven’t happened.

Lanci would scuttle Jackson’s lakefront efforts if elected. So if you want the lakefront developed, Jackson’s your candidate, even if he’s disappointed you so far.

The mayor has developers pitching plans for the land around Browns Stadium. An office park project near the East 9th Street pier is a step from final approval. Jackson should take Lanci’s scoff as a dare and get it done.

(Jackson art by Jason Byers, from Asterisk Gallery's 2008 CLE- show. Lanci art by Kristen Miller.)

Lanci buys Scene's cover

"There's a little piece of me," Ken Lanci told me not long ago, "thinking about starting my own newspaper."

No, the millionaire mayoral candidate hasn't bought Scene. At least, not yet.  But he did buy Scene's cover this week. 

About 44,000 copies of this giant Ohio-flag-colored fist are flying out of newsboxes and racks this week. "Surprise! There is a mayoral election on November 5th," the cover announces, as if the scrappy alt-weekly is publishing a cover story about the mayor's race. "Vote Lanci," it says, as if the paper is endorsing Frank Jackson's challenger.

But no, the actual Scene is writing about The Plain Dealer's owner.  

The alt-weekly sold a four-page wraparound ad, including the cover, to Lanci's campaign.  In it, Lanci calls the mayor a failure, slams The Plain Dealer, decries double-dipping and the state of the schools, defends himself against the charge he's a carpetbagger, and endorses himself.  

Or, to be precise, "The Lanci Tribune Editorial Board Endorses Ken Lanci for Mayor of Cleveland."

The ad is classic Lanci: flashy attention-seeking, blunt-force attacks on his opponent, a chutzpah-filled claim that Jackson is a "millionaire" (horrors!), thin-skinned lashing-out at critics in the media, and a confidence that a charity he supports, expanded to 550 times its size, will cure what ails the Cleveland schools. 

I expect no less from the guy.  More questionable is whether this fits Scene's character. 

The paper has been selling its cover a lot lately, but the deals have merely been annoying -- a sticker-ad marring the cover art -- or innocuously craven. Scene's young, nightlife-loving target audience is unlikely to object to a fake cover about Cleveland Beer Week.

Clearly, Scene's ad reps and publisher are getting desperate.  They know alt-weeklies can go out of business.  

Editorially, the paper seemed to bottom out a year or two ago, when it inaccurately predicted Bill Mason would be driven from office by scandal and then changed editors twice in a few months. This year, it's clawing to make a comeback, producing a strong Ariel Castro story 24 hours after his arrest and going where The Plain Dealer didn't go -- well, until today -- on the resignation of the art museum director.  The page counts seem to be bouncing back too.

But shouldn't a rebellious alt-weekly avoid a sleight-of-hand that suggests a millionaire political candidate can buy its endorsement?  

What sort of political coverage of the mayor's race will Scene offer up now?  "Premiere edition," declares the "Lanci Tribune."  Will the paper bite the hand that feeds in the next issue?  Or keep quiet about the mayor's race?

Update, 10/31: Nothing about the election in this week's Scene, though one of its writers definitely feels free to tweet his opinion on Lanci.

Update, 11/5: The mayor has bigger ideas: he unfurls a banner ad on cleveland.com's front page on Election Day.

Lanci on mayor's race: 'Everybody I know thinks I'm crazy for running'

"Everybody I know thinks I’m crazy, for doing this, for running, for spending the money," says Ken Lanci. "They don’t think I have a chance."

But Lanci, Mayor Frank Jackson's challenger in the Nov. 5 election, thinks the state of Cleveland's neighborhoods gives him a shot at taking over City Hall. The millionaire printing company owner and philanthropist is covering the town with bus and billboard ads proclaiming, "Together we can do better." Some are installed upside-down, to get attention.

Lanci's an eccentric, supremely confident guy. He's livened up an otherwise sleepy election season with his his very orange tan, his very expensive car (a Bentley, personalized license plate "Seraph"), and his curious campaign promises (lake cruise ships, asking bikers such as the Hell's Angels to fund youth boxing).

His critique of the mayor is simple and blunt: Lanci calls Jackson a failure on crime, education and jobs. What's his alternative?

My profile of Lanci, "Million-Dollar Challenger," in the new issue of Cleveland Magazine and online now, digs into why he took on Jackson, his ideas on schools and crime and cops, the near-death experience that inspired his runs for political office, and the ink he shows off to voters.  ("So you've never had a mayor with tattoos," he said to a woman in the Lee-Harvard shopping center as he rolled up his sleeve...)

Jackson slams Lanci’s motives at contentious City Club debate

Frank Jackson saved his toughest lines for the end. With an anger he’s rarely shown since his 2005 campaign, he ripped into challenger Ken Lanci’s reason for running for mayor at today’s City Club debate.

In his closing statement, Jackson teed off on Lanci’s oft-stated motivation, that the millionaire businessman decided to serve others after a near-fatal heart attack.

“When you face these challenges… from an ivory tower and just decide to move back to Cleveland because you believe you have a burden, you’re not going to get the result you need,” Jackson said.

For an hour today, Jackson and Lanci sparred on crime and education, the big two issues of any mayor’s race. Lanci aimed a blunderbuss at Jackson, calling the mayor a failure at both. He quoted Jackson lines from his 2005 campaign against Jane Campbell.

“We are worse off than we were four years ago,” Lanci said, echoing Jackson. “If I don’t restore hope to the ailing city within 200 days of taking office, I will consider myself a failure.”

In his opening statement, Jackson responded calmly with figures about City Hall spending in city neighborhoods. But by the end, he was worked up, in full populist mode.

Something about Lanci really gets under Jackson’s skin. That a rich businessman would move in from the suburbs to run against him rankles him. It gets him going on a favorite point, about “ivory tower” folks who don’t live working-class struggles. (“Ivory tower” usually means academia -- Jackson is really saying Lanci is acting out of noblesse oblige.)

“It is a contradiction of terms to empower those you intend to oppress,” Jackson said in his closing. “When someone is looking to feel good because they help somebody, that means that relationship always has to be in that way, where you’re in need, in order for them to feel good.

“I don’t feel good. This stuff is painful because I have to live it every day. It is painful when my wife, and my children, and my grandchildren, and their friends have to deal with this on a daily basis.”

Lanci blasted Jackson for the Cleveland schools’ F on the latest state report cards and declared Jackson’s old transformation plan and new school reforms failures. He also attacked Jackson for championing the school levy last year.

“Putting $70 million into the system, from people who could least afford it, is not going to get results,” Lanci said. “We have to mentor our children, and provide the leadership students don’t get in their homes.”

Lanci may have a point -- his idea of an enormous city-wide mentoring program reminds me of all-encompassing efforts, such as Promise Neighborhoods and the Harlem Children’s Zone, to improve kids’ academic achievement by improving the rest of their lives. But mentoring programs are paternalistic by definition, and Jackson pounced on that.

“It’s amazing -- children are the problems in school,” Jackson said. “Mothers being unmarried are the problems. It’s condescending and disrespectful, and it has a tone of disdain. You cannot serve those you disdain.”

Lanci tried to recover. “It’s disrespectful for the people of Cleveland to live with a failed school system,” he said.

But he struggled with a question from an audience member who noted that some have praised Jackson’s school plan as a national model. Lanci answered by quoting a teacher’s complaints about 100-degree classrooms in a heat wave and district staff jobs with jargony titles.

On crime and cops, the debate turned, as usual this year, on state attorney general Mike DeWine’s contention that last November’s 60-car police chase and fatal shooting was the result of a “systemic failure” in the police department. Moderator Rick Jackson brought up the quote, noted that Lanci got the police union’s endorsement, and asked him where he stood on the November incident.

Lanci repeated his campaign pledge that he’d fire safety director Martin Flask and police chief Michael McGrath. Then he went further, promising to let the police union pick the top candidates for chief for him to choose from. It was an attempt to blame the uncontrolled chase on the department’s leaders, not the officers who violated policy by joining the chase, and Jackson jumped on it.

“When [the police] union president [was] asked whether their opposition to the chief was because he was holding them accountable, he said absolutely so, that’s the only reason he wants him fired,” Jackson asserted.

“The systemic failure was not with the Cleveland police division,” Jackson argued, then turned to an attack on DeWine. “The systemic failure was with the attorney general’s office, denying due process and civil rights to the two victims. I’ve never heard you [Lanci] or the police union mention the two victims who were denied their due process and civil rights. And as a result of that, those officers are denied due process, because there’s no way in which even they can have a fair criminal hearing in regard to this, because it wasn’t done properly.”

The candidates' arguments showed how Cleveland can’t move past a simplistic either-or debate about the November chase and shooting. One side blames the leadership, one side the officers. No one ever holds both accountable.

The debate revealed more of Lanci’s platform: He said he wouldn’t continue the mayor’s attempt to develop the lakefront, that Cleveland has more urgent problems that trump building hotels. Instead, he said he’d focus on bringing container shipping, ferries, and lake cruise ships to the port.

In the debate’s weirdest moment, an audience member asked if Lanci had really told the teachers’ union in a questionnaire that he would have the Hell’s Angels and Zulu motorcycle clubs mentor seventh graders.

Lanci said he wants to bring back Golden Gloves boxing city-wide, so sons of single mothers have male mentors.

“I’ve asked some of the motorcycle clubs to sponsor teams, to be able to help mentor these kids, to give them something to belong to other than a gangbanger. We have to stop them from feeding that system. Even the motorcycle clubs are afraid of them. Because they don’t want to kill anybody. They know the consequences. The gangbangers don’t know.”

In his closing argument, Lanci promised an end to “broken promises and platitudes.” He slammed the mayor for his failed attempts to build a gasification plant and use a street-lighting contract to attract a lighting factory to town.

Then came Jackson’s brutal close, in which he painted Lanci as a do-gooder running to feel good. “I don’t go to a place of tragedy with hot dogs and hamburgers, to be disrespectful and condescending to that tragedy,” he said. The mayor’s campaign aide, Chris Nance, says he was talking about Lanci’s appearance on Imperial Avenue, site of Anthony Sowell’s 11 murders, earlier this year.

As Jackson finished, supporters of his, sitting near me, rejoiced gleefully. “This case is closed,” one said.

Lanci calls mayor a dirty word – millionaire

It’s an old trick in politics – hit your opponent in the very place you’re most vulnerable.

Ken Lanci’s doing just that in his latest campaign literature. He’s attacking Frank Jackson by calling him – of all things – a millionaire.

Lanci, a self-made millionaire businessman and self-financed mayoral candidate, is trying to out-populist the mayor from the city’s impoverished Central neighborhood. He wants to whip up outrage over Jackson’s salary, currently $136,758 a year. Multiply it by the mayor’s eight years in office and you get to $1 million.

“He will retire on a millionaire’s pension!” Lanci’s flier declares. Jackson’s 36 years as a government employee and his recent salary mean he’ll get about a $100,000 a year pension once he retires.

Lanci’s millionaire jujitsu move is lame – it just calls more attention to his own substantial wealth. He won’t give figures for his own net worth, but it is substantial. He dropped $1 million of his own cash on his 2010 race for county executive, and he says he’s willing to spend $1 million again this year to match Jackson’s campaign fund. He's a flashy guy who’s feuding with Plain Dealer reporters about his very nice car. Clearly he thinks there’s nothing wrong with wealth, or getting paid.

But the flier goes beyond hypocritical millionaire-bashing. Lanci’s trying to argue that Jackson hasn’t earned his salary or pension. The flier also complains that Cleveland crime, poverty and schools have all worsened since Jackson became mayor in 2006.

It’s a potent critique. Education, jobs and crime are the top three issues in any mayor’s race.

But Jackson’s defenders will say Lanci’s attack is simplistic. Mayors don’t control the economy. The Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis hit during Jackson’s first term, wiping out jobs and tearing the fabric of many neighborhoods. The mayor’s supporters will argue that the fairest way to judge him is on how he’s helped Cleveland weather the storm.

Angry Lanci says mayor has “consistently failed”

Ken Lanci was mad. Really mad. Breathing heavily into the overamped mike mad.

“Let’s be honest: the quality of the residents’ lives is declining,” Lanci said. “Things are getting worse, not better.”

The hot-tempered millionaire announced he’s running for mayor against Frank Jackson today. His event, at his printing company building in AsiaTown, had a very different vibe than his 2010 campaign for Cuyahoga County executive. Then he was the turnaround specialist; now he’s the angry challenger.

“The voters of Cleveland will have a very stark choice,” Lanci said. “They can vote for mayor who has not delivered and consistently failed, or they can vote for a new direction, a new approach, a new day.”

Anyone who thinks real mayors use the bully pulpit to lead have their man in Lanci. He’s the big-stick podium-pounder personified. Those tired of Jackson’s introverted demeanor will get what they ask for in the fall election. Lanci runs as hot as Jackson runs cold.

Today, Lanci delivered the most overly intense political speech I’ve seen in town in more than a decade. He stalked through it, mad as hell at the state of Cleveland, then choked up as he thanked his late mother for being “the first woman to ever love me,” then swung back to anger.

Cleveland residents’ current quality of life “is unacceptable to me,” he said. “It is absolutely unacceptable.”

Sometimes the speech was effective. Lanci tore into Jackson’s record by quoting his pledges about education, safety and jobs from his 2006 State of the City address. He cited statistics to argue Jackson hasn't delivered.

Lanci went at Jackson especially hard on the Cleveland schools. The mayor is sure to run on the promise of his twin victories on school reform and the school levy last year. But Lanci is running on the results of the last eight years: the district met none of the state’s 26 standards in 2012.

Inevitably, Lanci used the mayor’s most underwhelming catch phrase against him.

“I think Frank Jackson is a good man. I also feel that he has done his best. However I feel that being involved in city politics for 30 years has given him a sense of, ‘It is what it is.’”

Ooh, some in the audience responded.

Lanci spoke from a stage in the middle of his Consolidated Graphics’ printing room. Several employees in work shirts sat atop the big Heidelberg Speedmaster presses for a better view, while dozens of people wearing Lanci stickers, dressed in everything from suits to business casual to working-class plaids, milled about between the rows of machinery.

African hand-drumming announced Lanci’s impending arrival onstage. The event seemed planned with acute awareness of the challenges facing a white challenger to a black mayor in a black-majority city.

But the invite list, while diverse, seemed filled out with a motley crew of gadflies. Black on Black Crime’s Art McKoy and black-trades activist Norman Edwards topped the list of recognizable figures. A guy sporting a New Black Panther Party jacket and pin managed to plant himself right behind Lanci during the candidate’s post-announcement press conference.

There, reporters asked for specifics lacking in Lanci’s speech. How would he bring more jobs to Cleveland? How would he change the schools reform plan?

“I can create more jobs by seeking out companies to come to Cleveland,” Lanci said, repeating the mantra of most businessmen-turned-candidates.

He didn’t critique the mayor’s plan for the schools. Instead, he said, “I can create a culture in the schools about caring, love, and opportunity. I’ve been in the schools 18 years. I’ve funded programs that do work.” (His campaign flyer mentions Project Love and Purple American, for at-risk teens.)

What makes Lanci run?

A lot of people wondered that when the orange-tanned businessman ran for county exec as an independent, spent $1 million of his own cash, covered the county with roving bus ads, and won 11 percent of the vote. A lot of people, especially Jackson supporters, will surely ask why he’s running now and why he moved from Brecksville to an East 12th Street apartment to do it.

A young Fox 8 reporter provoked Lanci: “To anyone who would say that you’re a guy who just has a lot of money and likes the attention, what would you say?”

Lanci responded by talking about his 2007 heart attack. “At 57 years old, I died. Through the grace of God, he brought me back. What did I need to come back for?” His answer: to use his talents to give back to the city.

Jackson should be able to dispatch this challenge by running on a few favorite themes: Others talk, I work. I have a plan; what’s his plan? He didn’t live here; why’s he a candidate? But if you want an aggressive challenger to the mayor, you’ve got him in Lanci, a temperamental opposite with drive and funds and fight to spare.

FitzGerald heads toward victory against Dolan

It looks like Ed FitzGerald will be the first Cuyahoga County executive. He leads Matt Dolan, 43 percent to 33 percent, in the early voting results.

Independents Ken Lanci and Tim McCormack are third and fourth with 10 percent each.

The early voting results likely make up almost half of the votes cast in today’s election. So these results are likely a good indication of how things will look at the end of the night.

The last two months have battered FitzGerald, but not enough (it seems) to deny him victory. The Lakewood mayor went into the general election as the front-runner, thanks to a sharp campaign and the Democrats’ huge natural advantage in Cuyahoga County. His own poll showed him 17 points ahead of Dolan in early September.

Then came his cameo appearance as PO14 in the Jimmy Dimora indictment and Dolan’s fierce attack ads. They cut into his lead, but not by enough.

FitzGerald mounted a strong defense. He said Lakewood's lease of the Winterhurst ice rink to a now-indicted Dimora buddy had been above-board and benefited taxpayers. He couldn't compete with Dolan's $1 million-plus ad barrage, so he countered it with direct mail accusing Dolan of slinging mud.

Two viable independent candidates, Lanci and McCormack, made it hard for Dolan to win votes. Voters sick of Democrats had somewhere else to go. Dolan's 33 percent doesn't even reach Republicans' recent high-water mark in Cuyahoga County -- Debbie Sutherland's 38 percent in 2008 against Peter Lawson Jones.

If these results hold, plenty of Greater Clevelanders will complain about their fellow voters' loyalty to Democrats despite the scandals of the last three years. But FitzGerald tackled the integrity issue right away. Fighting corruption was a passion of his, he told me last December.

His experience as an FBI agent helped insulate him. So did his relative inexperience in politics. Dimora didn't try to befriend FitzGerald until he won the Lakewood mayor's race in 2007. The few ties between the two -- Dimora's phone call asking FitzGerald to return someone else's call, a few campaign contributions -- weren't enough to scare voters off.

Republicans will have a few results to console themselves with. Their candidate Michael Astrab is beating indicted judge Bridget McCafferty. Republicans Dave Greenspan, Michael Gallagher, and Jack Schron all have strong leads in the outer-ring suburbs' county council districts.

A year ago, I wrote that the Issue 6 framers had gerrymandered the council districts to elect four white Democrats, four black Democrats, and three Republicans. Looks like it worked. Democrats are headed for an 8-3 majority on council, but the three Republicans will bring two-party government back to Cuyahoga County for the first time since the mid-1990s.

Ken Lanci shows me his homework

Ken Lanci walked into the conference room looking very stern. He carried two bulky binders and few sheets of paper. He showed no sign of the smile he’s replicated on 75 buses. No diplomacy, just business.

Lanci set the binders and papers on the table in front of him. I recognized my blog’s logo on the top sheet and saw a single paragraph marked. I knew which one.

I first interviewed Lanci in January, a week after he announced his run for county executive. I slammed him on my blog for not knowing the county government well. I’d asked him to critique the county’s economic development department and he gave a maddening non-answer.

“There are a lot of things I can’t comment on without getting in the belly of the beast,” he said then. “I’m not promising anything until I get inside.”

I wrote: “This sounds too much like, Trust me, I'll figure it out. Before voters can trust him as a turnaround expert, Lanci needs to show that his business turnaround experience is relevant to county government.”

Now, in our second interview, Lanci wanted to confront what I’d written. He turned one of my questions around and read my “Trust me” paragraph back to me.

“The challenge, I consider legitimate, a great question,” Lanci told me. “I answer it the way I’ve always done business. I look at the county as if I’m buying it.”

I don’t know if I’d nudged him to dig deeper, or if he’d meant to do it all along. But the guy had done his research.

“I’ve had about 60 agency visits, meeting with directors and with staff,” he said. “And as a result of that, I’ve put together my plan. Now, I’m not going to share the details with you because —

“There’s 60 of them,” I said.

“That wouldn’t be prudent at this time either, to lay out the plans for everyone else to take a look at.” (Meaning the other candidates, I assumed.)

He opened a binder. “I have each budget for each agency I reviewed. I have the director, a bio of the agency, as well as photos of directors.”

Lanci said he thought some county departments were working just fine, including Developmental Disability and, surprisingly, Children And Family Services. He defended Deborah Forkas, CFS’s embattled director, as a “professional of the highest standard,” unfairly blamed for abuse of kids in families the agency monitored. The law prefers that kids be reunited with their parents, Lanci noted. “It’s easy to say it’s the director’s fault. It’s not the director’s fault.”

He promised to reorganize the auditor’s and recorder’s offices, but wouldn’t tell me which other offices he thought needed improvement.

“The last thing you want to be perceived [as] is a bull in a china shop before you get there,” he said. “That’s not what I am. I don’t want people to anticipate things that aren’t real, just because I say, this department has issues.”

I suggested he was passing up a chance to show voters what sort of change he’d deliver.

“I’m schooled on the business of the county,” he replied. “They can trust that if I spent the time getting that information, I know which [agencies] are the tough ones, and the ones I need to deal with. … This is that part where you said ‘Trust me.’ I ask you to trust me not based on my statement, ‘Trust me.’ Trust me based on the work that I’ve done.”

I left full of conflicting thoughts about Lanci. By the interview’s end, he’d reinforced my feeling that he’d have trouble getting along with other elected officials. He told me he’d press Northeast Ohio’s congressional delegation to bring home more federal spending.

“Every one of these people are going to be called in and are going to be required to be part of the solution,” he declared: “Every other senator, every other [U.S.] representative, the governor, treasurer, everybody, has got to work for Cuyahoga County.”

To the best of my knowledge, county officials don’t “call in” governors, senators or congressmen. They have to ask them for help. Politely.

But addressing my criticism showed his willingness to tackle a challenge. And he proved this much: He’s worked hard to figure out county government in case voters choose him on Tuesday.

Dolan-FitzGerald, Lanci-Scipione feuds heat up at City Club debate

Matt Dolan and Ed FitzGerald fought the main bout while Ken Lanci and Don Scipione faced off on the undercard at the county executive candidates’ debate this week at the City Club.

FitzGerald, who's endured two weeks of brutal attack-ad beatings from Dolan, led with a classic political jujitsu move.

“Five out of the six candidates have run positive, issue-based, substantive campaigns,” he said. “Mr. Dolan is the quite clear exception to that. He ran an exceedingly negative primary campaign, and he’s run an exceedingly negative general election campaign. And you can’t change this county if you don’t ennoble this process by trying to be positive and tell people what it is you’re going to do differently.”

Dolan said voters need to know FitzGerald was among the “Democratic entrenched interests” who opposed Issue 6 and supported the “sham reform” Issue 5. Anticipating FitzGerald’s next move, Dolan disclosed that his relatives – including his father, Indians owner Larry Dolan -- are contributing more than $1 million to his campaign.

“Before I got into this race, I talked to Democrats and Republicans,” Dolan said. “I said, ‘What’s it going to take to win? What’s it going to take to beat the entrenched interests?’ They said, ‘It’s going to take about $2 million.’" He repeated his plans to recuse himself from Indians matters and create a bipartisan committee to advise him on appointments. {Update, 10/20: Here's my new post on how Dolan would handle this.}

FitzGerald said Dolan’s friends should have told him to run a positive campaign instead of “commercials that are showing me Photoshopped as a Russian monarch.” The ad's image -- accompanied by balalaikas, no less! -- refers to FitzGerald’s Oct. 2009 complaint that the county executive would be “a czar” who “will control just about everything in Cuyahoga County government.”

“I apologize for being out of uniform this afternoon,” FitzGerald joked.

“Issue 6 is a concentration of political power,” he continued, “but what aggravates that is if you have a concentration of economic power.” A wealthy family "spending money like it’s water" to "capture the most powerful local political office" is "the worst way possible to actually to reform this government. It can’t work.”

Ken Lanci, taking advantage of the latest Bill Mason controversies, tried to make the prosecutor a political bogeyman.

"Who's connected to what?" he asked. "You have Mr. Mason, who is a friend of Mr. Scipione’s, who worked on the charter with him. You have Mr. Mason, who is a friend of Mr. Fitzgerald. You have Mr. Mason, who is a friend of Martin Zanotti’s, who’s now a friend of Mr. Dolan’s. It’s anybody but Lanci! … Lanci is the only guy none of them can control!”

That roused Don Scipione, normally a quirky-scientist figure, the opposite of Lanci’s brawny CEO persona.

“This Mason stuff! Give me a break!” Scipione exclaimed. "The first time I met Bill Mason was a year and a half ago. … The only advice he gave me was not to run!

“Ken, give me a break! You did the pay-to-play with Zack Reed at Luke Easter Park to try to keep me from getting [petition] signatures! You filed a [complaint] at the Board Of Elections saying I was a Democrat, not an independent, and they voted 4-0 against you!

“We’re not going to split the Italian vote! I’m Italian in the vein of Marconi and Michelangelo and Galileo and Enrico Fermi! That’s my Italian heritage!

“What was I going to say before that? I forgot!” The audience cracked up.

A questioner tried to force decorum by asking the candidates which opponent they’d choose as a chief of staff. Dolan chose Scipione, David Ellison named Tim McCormack, and McCormack cited Dolan.

“I’d be tempted to choose some people just so I could fire them,” FitzGerald cracked before picking Scipione.

“I was going to say Mr. Scipione,” said Lanci, “but I can’t get past $200 million in savings without a plan.” (Scipione claims that he could reap vast savings by modernizing the county’s technology and systems. A county transition committee also claims the county could save huge sums that way. {Update, 10/21: See the Comments for more on this.)

Scipione deflected Lanci with more humor. “I would look at Ken, because at $1 a year—” The audience, who’d heard Lanci promise to work for a $1 salary, drowned him out with more laughter.

Cool Cleveland endorses Lanci

Here's an interesting pairing. Thomas Mulready has just posted Cool Cleveland's endorsement in the county executive race: Ken Lanci.

You might not think the porkpie-hatted culture maven and the deeply-tanned millionaire have much in common. But remember, Mulready's e-newsletter isn't just about the arts, it's also about the new tech economy. The Internet entrepreneur praises Lanci's "ability to turn around companies" and "really strong grasp of the issues."

Lanci "has the best opportunity to take this county in a new direction in a new era," Mulready says in a video. "It's time for the county and voters to make a strong statement that they really want change."

Mulready -- who's done video interviews with all six county executive contenders -- calls Matt Dolan and Ed FitzGerald strong candidates, but doesn't like Dolan's conflict of interest with the Indians and Gateway. He calls FitzGerald "part of the Democratic machine" and complains that the party let Jimmy Dimora remain its chairman too long.

Sure, CoolCleveland's endorsement is not nearly as weighty as the Plain Dealer's. But Mulready, a voice in the ear of the arts-and-culture crowd, may nudge some of his readers to take a second look at Lanci. I think he did that in the 2005 mayor's race, when he surprised the artsy crowd by presciently recommending Frank Jackson over Jane Campbell.

What about the PD endorsement? I think it's coming Sunday. The editorial board interviewed the candidates this week. They liked both Dolan and FitzGerald in the primaries, but they seemed to like Dolan a bit more. My guess is, they'll endorse him.

To read my coverage of the county executive race in September's Cleveland Magazine, including pieces on the leading candidates, click here.

County exec candidates talk corruption on Dimora’s day of reckoning

At the very moment Jimmy Dimora was pleading not guilty to 26 corruption charges on Wednesday, the six candidates for Cuyahoga County executive were sharing a stage at a forum in Lyndhurst. Moderator Steve Gleydura, Cleveland Magazine’s editor, asked them how they’d drive corruption out of the county government.

Lakewood Mayor Ed FitzGerald stressed his credentials as a former FBI agent investigating crooked Chicago-area politicians. He described feeling “déjà vu” while watching Dimora’s arrest on TV.

“Greed – that is the fundamental motivation behind these crimes,” the Democrat said. “You have people in leadership positions that either went into public service for the wrong reasons, or they forgot why they went into it in the first place. What happens when you set that example at the top is, it gives tacit permission for all kinds of misconduct below those levels.”

The FBI can’t clean up a dirty government by itself, he warned. “They pick out specific instances of federal violations, and that’s it. They don’t look at whether an employee is maybe cutting time on clock, or misusing a county computer, or just isn’t motivated or is going through the motions. Those things have to be done by management.”

FitzGerald said he’d set up a “completely transparent” hiring process the day after the election and fill the new county administration with people chosen for their knowledge, not connection. “If we set high ethical standards and bring the right team in, we can turn this situation around.”

The forum, held at Executive Caterers at Landerhaven, took place at lunchtime Wednesday. Most of the audience knew Dimora had been arrested early that morning, though news outlets were still sifting through the details of the 138-page indictment. Tim McCormack, on the other hand, sounded like he’d already read the indictment and noticed FitzGerald's cameo appearance as Public Official 14, taking a brief 2008 call from Dimora about the lease of Lakewood's Winterhurst ice rink.

“Bad people knew where there’s a weak spot,” McCormack said. “They do not approach and they don’t do business with bad administrations. You set that standard every single day in the way you use your voice, your telephone calls, your practices. It happens every hour of the day. That’s how you root [corruption] out and avoid it in the future.”

McCormack, who once served with Dimora on the county commission, made the startling suggestion that “hundreds of additional people” may have “paid bribes to secure county positions.” It was hard to tell whether to take the comment literally, since McCormack based his comment on “information” from a source he didn’t name. (He recently said the FBI asked him around 2000 about rumors of a jobs-for-bribes scheme in former auditor Frank Russo’s office.)

Republican candidate Matt Dolan also swiped at FitzGerald. Better ethics, he said, starts with not electing a county executive candidate who “stood shoulder to shoulder with the current establishment and did not support Issue 6 county reform.” Dolan described his proposal to establish a bipartisan committee to screen appointees for all county boards and commissions. The committee would set qualifications, sift resumes, and examine whether to abolish any boards or commissions entirely.

“We’re going to do something brand new, unfortunately, in this county: we’re going to require job descriptions for everyone,” Dolan added. “If you are not qualified to do the important work, you will be removed.” He also hinted at Russo’s recent reassignments of workers caught in the Board of Revision scandal. “We are not going to shift people around,” he said. “If you breach the public trust, you’re not qualified, you’re fired! No longer are we going to be moving them to back rooms.” Dolan also said he’d institute an ethics policy by executive order on his first day in office.

Independent Ken Lanci cited his proposals for employee ethics training and an office to regulate and register vendors, lobbyists and consultants doing business with the county. Stressing his experience as a business turnaround expert and his many recent conversations with county department heads, he also said the new executive would have to inspire the county’s ethical employees.

“Everybody thinks they’re corrupt,” he says. “I can tell you, there are a lot of extremely qualified, very good employees, in this county. So don’t be confused by what you saw this morning. There’s 8,000 people there, you probably have 7,500 people that are pretty honest. It’ll be up to the CEO to turn their attitude around, make them proud of the job that they have.”

Don Scipione, also an independent candidate and businessman, said he endorsed the recommendations of the county transition work groups on ethics and campaign finance reform: limits on campaign contributions to county candidates (none exist now), ethics training for county workers, and “online transparency of the relationship between vendors and campaign contributions.” (Scipione served on the campaign finance transition group before resigning to run for county executive.)

Green Party candidate David Ellison, the last to respond, changed the subject to encouraging collaborations among “all the people who have the answers.” He warned that the county faces a $19 million deficit, which could worsen if the state’s $8 billion budget shortfall causes it to cut funds to counties. “We may have to get rid of people we don’t want to get rid of,” he said. “We might be good, thorough house cleaners of the ethical problems and still have to get rid of more people.”

FitzGerald streaks toward victory over Brown

Ed FitzGerald jumped into the county executive race last December, when the rest of town was still arguing about the last election. While bigger names dithered and stepped back from the leap, he ran all out. He got a four-month head start on his Democratic opponent and never looked back.

Now FitzGerald looks like he’s heading to victory in the Democratic primary. He leads Terri Hamilton Brown, 50% to 30%, in the vote-by-mail results – which will probably be two-thirds of all the ballots cast in today’s election. It’s likely an insurmountable lead. Likewise for Republican Matt Dolan, who leads Victor Voinovich 70% to 18% so far.

FitzGerald’s quick move into the race, just eight weeks after Issue 6 passed, didn’t impress too many people. The Issue 6 crowd tried to call a foul, saying no one who campaigned against their reform should lead the new government. But by Christmas, FitzGerald had already perfected his answer: He thought the county executive too powerful, so if elected, he’d check his own power.

I remember one or two people scoffing. Being first didn’t matter, they said. But in this election, when bigger names shivered and stepped back from the diving board, FitzGerald’s early leap made a big difference. He had six months to line up endorsements. He churned out one position paper after another. Hearing him talk, I got a sense of restless motion. It’s a good vibe to give off in a reform election.

Tenacity stands out in a field of unknowns and little-knowns. So does poise. FitzGerald’s a better communicator than Brown and might be the best in the general election field.

Political instincts stand out too. FitzGerald sensed he was in the lead at the City Club debate. He ignored Brown’s jabs and called out the Republican candidates for jabbing each other. He took the high road because he knew he could afford to.

Now, Matt Dolan awaits, warmed up by some shadow-boxing with George Voinovich's brother. Also ready to fight FitzGerald is Ken Lanci, his name recognition swelled by ubiquitous bus ads. Both are wealthy men who'll outspend the Lakewood mayor. Tim McCormack, the old-school liberal, may hit FitzGerald hardest of all -- did you see his "deceit" quote last week?

It'll be a dramatic general election. But FitzGerald's got a running start. And he's probably already planned his next few moves.

Check out my coverage of the county executive race, "A Fresh Start," in the September issue of Cleveland Magazine or online here.

Rob Frost rips Ken Lanci for ‘exclusive’ deal with Zack Reed’s festival

Now we know Ken Lanci is a serious candidate. Rob Frost, the county Republican chairman known for his Dimora-baiting, just sent out his first anti-Lanci press release:

While the FBI is investigating Frank Russo, Jimmy Dimora and their cronies for using public money to gain influence and reward friends, we hear news that Ken Lanci bought "exclusive rights" to an area at the Family Unity Festival. The Festival is held in a public park, has historically been partially financed by tax payer dollars and is advertised by the City of Cleveland.

Lanci's actions just go to show that Lanci thinks because he has money, fairness, public access and democracy don't apply to him.

Apparently, Lanci was the only county executive candidate allowed to pass out campaign literature at Zack Reed’s festival in Luke Easter Park over the weekend. On his website, Lanci calmly explains he bought exclusive sponsorship rights to Reed’s festival fair and square. And if his opponents want to pass stuff out at the Glenville Community Festival Aug. 14, they’d better pony up, or he’ll buy that one up too!

“Both local political parties were asked to sponsor Family Unity in the Park, as were other individual candidates. We were told they declined. So I stepped up to help make this event successful,” said Lanci.

This is definitely a new type of campaigning, way more creative than ads on 75 buses. Your average Republican or Democrat just assumes they can hit the neighborhood festival circuit every weekend and meet voters for free. Cheapskates!

But I think I know the real reason Frost is jealous. Who wouldn’t pay to get on the same bill as Morris Day & the Time?

Ken Lanci: Style in motion

“Are you bird-watching?” asked a co-worker who spied me, camera in hand, on East 14th Street this morning.

Why, yes, actually. I was hunting for Ken Lanci’s soaring white eagle, as easy to spot in Cleveland this season as a yellow warbler at Point Pelee in May.

The businessman and candidate for county executive dropped more than $200,000 on a six-month bus-ad lease. So Lanci’s ads now decorate 75 of RTA’s 348 buses -- 22 percent of the entire fleet. His smiling, tanned face and his ultra-American red-white-and-blue banners (a symbol of independence from the two-party system) will grace Greater Cleveland’s thoroughfares right up to Election Day. They’ve become the campaign’s signature visual statement, so over the top in their repetitive relentlessness, they’re a giant declaration of seriousness with unintended comic effects.

It’s hard to choose between laughter and disbelief at moments like the one I experienced this morning, when ten minutes’ rush-hour vigil brought me a bigger reward than I’d dared hope for: Not a sighting of a commonplace Lanci ad banner, but a rare, glorious Full Lanci (pictured above), one of five wrap-around makeovers alighting on our streets.

Viewed up close, the Full Lancis reveal several details about the candidate’s sartorial style.

“Lanci’s monogrammed French cuffs and golden tan were enough to make George Hamilton blush,” declares an anonymous blogger on the Cleveland SGS website, which marries a love of local commercial advertising with an affection for multilingual hip-hop and pissed-off cobras. “Lanci is solely responsible for reuniting fashion and politics in the Cleveland area.”

It’d be easy to dismiss the 75 Lancis-in-motion as expressions of a bus-sized wallet and ego. But they’ve given the once-unknown businessman the first essential thing many candidates crave and lack: name recognition. That means voters will at least hear Lanci out this fall when he tries to explain who he is and what he’d do as county executive.

Lanci seems quite aware of this: His video “Who R U?” features an indie-rock-sounding band called The Indies performing a song “about the importance of name recognition,” according to his website. “Who are you?/I think I saw your picture on the bus…” the band sings.

I think the transit-saturation foreshadows Lanci’s next big move: The guy who’s taken over our bus system is already starting to spend some wild multiple of that 200 large to take over our TV screens.

Dolan: “I represent a new mentality, a new energy”

Matt Dolan is 45 and looks younger, a polished advocate who can talk about every level of government with authority, a former state rep who says he works well with both parties.

Oh, and he’s the son of Indians owner Larry Dolan. So he’s got name recognition and plenty of money.

But the conventional wisdom scoffs at his run for county executive. He’s a carpetbagger, the chatter goes. Worse, a Republican. In Cuyahoga County, that makes him a long shot.

I’m not so sure.

“This Republican can do a better job as county executive,” says Dolan, stressing his bipartisan credentials. As House finance chair in 2007, he helped forge a budget deal that passed almost unanimously. “We came up with a budget that lowered taxes, lowered growth of government, and lowered spending without crippling needed services,” he says. Last year, he was one of the few Republicans who voted to suspend an income tax cut to plug a hole in the new budget.

“The message to Democrats is: I understand the nature of working together,” Dolan says. “This reform, while it changes the form of [county] government, if we put the same mentality in the new positions, we’re not advancing forward. I represent a new mentality, a new energy, a new spirit of cooperation that has not been here in years.”

The new government will have to balance the county’s social-service role with the new charter’s focus on job growth. Dolan’s thoughts on that reflect his moderate Republicanism.

“People are in need,” he says, “and you have to provide the services to them.” Still, “Government can’t sustain these folks. The only thing that’s going to help everybody is to improve the economy, to get more jobs.”

Dolan has said he might cut the county’s 7.75 percent sales tax. That led to the first debate in the county executive race, with independent Ken Lanci arguing all savings from a more efficient government should go to economic development instead. Dolan responds like a true conservative: Tax cuts are economic development.

“We have the highest sales tax in the state,” Dolan says. “It's counterproductive to the creation of job growth.” Dolan says he wouldn’t cut social services, public transit, or the Medical Mart project to trim the sales tax — he’d cut the 1 percent of the 7.75 that directly funds government operations and staffing. “If we have the highest sales tax, and we have a government that’s overstaffed, and we have duplicative services, what have we been paying for?” He’s also open to using the savings to invest in aging infrastructure — roads, sewers — or intellectual capital, such as more business incubators.

If elected, on his first day in office, “I’m issuing an executive order for ethics training for all county employees,” Dolan says. “If you fail to conduct yourself as a public servant, you will be let go.” He’d address the concerns about minority inclusion in the new government with his cabinet appointments. “I think a big mistake would be to create a cabinet that didn’t look like Cuyahoga County, both in terms of race and politics,” he says.

Most coverage of Dolan’s candidacy has focused on his December move into Cuyahoga County, from Russell Township to Chagrin Falls. So he plays up his Cuyahoga bona-fides. He went to Gilmour Academy and Case Law School. His state house district included Mayfield, Mayfield Heights, Gates Mills and Highland Heights. In the House, he championed the new county land bank and the state’s Third Frontier program, 44 percent of which is spent in Northeast Ohio. “I feel very comfortable that the issue will be my passion for the community and knowledge of the community, much more than where my address is or was,” he says.

Here’s why I think Dolan has a better shot at becoming county executive than people realize. Plenty of Republicans think he’s not conservative enough — Strongsville Mayor Tom Perciak seems to have tested a possible primary run against him with a robo-poll last week — but that may mean he’s moderate enough to win county-wide. He could appeal to independents who’ve lost trust in local Democrats. And the general election will be a three-way race, so Dolan may not need a majority to get elected.

He’ll be accepted as a Clevelander, if only because his dad runs the town’s beloved baseball team. He can raise money on his own — $1 million for his last House race — and has his family’s fortune as a backup.

But those family ties also pose a peculiar challenge: If Indians fans suffer through another dismal rebuilding season, they may be in no mood to vote for a Dolan by November. Candidate Dolan might be better off telling his dad he can best help his campaign not by footing the bill for political ads, but by adding to the Indians’ payroll.

{*Correction: The original post incorrectly stated that Dolan voted for Gov. Strickland's budget last year. Dolan voted against the July budget deal. He voted for the December deal to suspend an income tax cut to plug a hole in the budget.}

County transition team will open up all its meetings

If you act like a government, you've got to open up like a government should. That's the lesson Martin Zanotti and Jim McCafferty learned this week.

Cleveland.com just reported that Cuyahoga County's transition advisory group will hold all its committee meetings in public. The decision comes three days after Zanotti and McCafferty, who are shepherding the switch to charter government, went on WCPN on Tuesday and got an earful.

Host Dan Moulthrop and his listeners asked: Why aren't the transition team's meetings open to the public? The Plain Dealer amplified the questions with a story. County executive candidate Ed FitzGerald joined the chorus. {Update, 2/13: So did Scene and candidate Matt Dolan.} Yesterday, the ACLU threatened to sue.

At first, McCafferty, the county administrator, and Zanotti, a leader of the charter reform effort, argued that holding some public forums would be enough. The transition committees didn't have to open all their meetings, they argued, because they aren't government bodies, just advisers. The volunteers on the committees ought to be able to talk about layoffs and other sensitive issues without fear of upsetting anyone, they argued.

Problem was, closed meetings were one reason voters turned against McCafferty's bosses, the county commissioners, and voted for Issue 6. At the same time, the most piercing criticism of Zanotti and the other Issue 6 reformers was that they'd written the charter in private. So a fight to keep the meeting doors closed threatened to revive all that distrust and hurt the new government's credibility.

Besides, the transition group has expanded way beyond what the charter calls for, from a little committee of three county employees into an ambitious partnership including the current government, Issue 6's framers, and top public officials and business executives. And it's not just making little recommendations, like a place for the new county council to meet. It's proposing huge changes in county government's priorities. Last month, Zanotti and McCafferty declared that the new government should cut spending 15 percent and start a $50 million economic development fund -- changes much bigger than the current, lame-duck government ever contemplated.

The transition group is acting like a government, even though it wasn't elected. The public needs some way to hold it accountable. Watching it work is the best solution.

Today's decision doesn't resolve county executive candidates Ken Lanci and Ed FitzGerald's complaints that they should be included in the transition effort. But Zanotti and others decided to exclude candidates to keep the transition free of politics. Now, Lanci, FitzGerald, and any other interested candidates can attend the committee meetings, learn what's going on, and talk about it if they want. That's better than taking a risk that some candidates would turn the committees into stages for their campaigns.

Russo considered, rejected civil-service move for employees

County auditor Frank Russo considered extending civil-service protection to all his employees after Issue 6 passed, but he has decided against it, says Destin Ramsey, the auditor's chief operating officer.

“We had thought about that, but we clearly don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” Ramsey told me today. “With the whole scheme of things, with the reform coming in, it would take too long.”

Russo considered the move to give his employees more job security, Ramsey says. “He came up with the idea of looking into it, and we did.” But the staff determined that civil-service protection would not prevent the new government from instituting layoffs.

“It didn’t make much difference, especially when it comes to the new government coming in — it’s going to make its own [decisions],” Ramsey says. The new charter calls for the auditor’s and recorder’s offices to merge in January 2011. The county executive will appoint a chief fiscal officer to run the new department.

The auditor’s and recorder’s offices are top targets of reformers who say patronage and corruption have bloated the county payroll. Federal prosecutors claim some auditor’s employees obtained their jobs thanks to bribery-and-favors schemes involving Russo, though he has not been charged with a crime.

County executive candidate Ken Lanci publicized the possible move to extend civil-service protection at the county in his Jan. 13 campaign announcement. Ramsey’s acknowledgment is the first confirmation that a county official considered the idea.

Around New Year’s, Russo decided not to pursue the civil-service idea, Ramsey says. One-fourth of the auditor’s staff took the recent county buyout, so the office is busy reorganizing. It’s also responding to a performance audit by state auditor Mary Taylor’s office and subpoenas from federal investigators, and may have to cope with a possible pending audit by state attorney general Richard Cordray. Extending civil-service protection involves a long process, Ramsey says — and Russo and his staff calculated they couldn’t get it and everything else done this year.

“It’s too much of a undertaking to engage in that at this time,” Ramsey says. “In light of all our responsibilities, it wouldn’t be productive for us.”

Retired reporter still gets tips: Wagner's digging at the county building

Joe Wagner retired from the Plain Dealer late last year, but he still gets reporting tips. Sources who didn’t know he'd left the paper called him recently to tell him they’d heard county auditor Frank Russo and recorder Lillian Greene might extend civil service protection to some of their employees.

So Wagner, now a spokesman for county executive candidate Ken Lanci, took the news to his new boss. Lanci mentioned it in his Jan. 13 campaign announcement (see video here).

“I’m troubled by comments that there are efforts to reclassify many county employees as civil service workers,” Lanci said. “That’s not reform, that’s political patronage again. And it’s not what we voted for.” Lanci said he’d sent the county a public records request to find out if the tips were true. “I urge the transition team to make sure no actions are taken that limit our opportunities to remake government in this new era,” he said.

Usually, creating a civil service is meant to prevent patronage. Giving government employees job security protects them from depending on their boss’s re-election. But reclassifying a patronage-laden workforce as civil service just before leaving office would have the opposite effect -- it’d make it hard for the new county executive to cut spending and fire the least-qualified employees. Wagner, author of the Plain Dealer’s 2008 “Payroll and Politics” exposés of the auditor’s and recorder’s offices, was naturally interested in the warnings. So was Lanci.

“It happened by happenstance,” Wagner says. “My sources over at the county who still thought I was there, they called me on my cell phone: ‘Did you hear that?’ ‘Well, I hadn’t, but I guess I just did!’ ”

Will any county officials try this move before the new government takes over? Or is it a false alarm? Calls I placed to the recorder’s and auditor’s offices yesterday were not returned.

{Update, 7 p.m.: Russo staffer Destin Ramsey confirms that Russo considered giving all his employees civil-service protection, but decided against it. See this new post.}

Lanci and Wagner say they’re starting to receive documents from some county agencies, but they’re still reviewing them; other county offices haven’t responded yet. “The Plain Dealer’s made a big records request over there too, on the same subject,” Wagner says. So watch for more news on this soon.

Ken Lanci: Only an independent can change the county

Ken Lanci says he’s running for Cuyahoga County executive because neither Democrats nor Republicans can reform county government.

“If people really want to see change, you cannot put in a Democrat or a Republican, because it’s all about the party,” the independent candidate argues. “As much as somebody will sit and tell you, ‘I will go down the middle and work for the people,’ the party that gave the money to that individual is going to get that marker cashed. There’s going to be things he can’t fight for, because he’s going to be told, ‘If you think you’ve got a career, this could be your last job.’”

Lanci, 59, a printing company owner and business turnaround expert, says he can use his talents to turn Cuyahoga County around. “The experience I have was gained over 40 years,” he says. “If I can make money from nothing and be successful, I should be able to go in and help the people of the county as well.”

He’s owned 20 companies, all startups or turnarounds. “I don’t think I can remember having purchased a company that was doing very well.” Starting with his father’s company when he was 19, he’s brought back several companies from the brink of death, from Northeast Wine Distributors to a division of the Cleveland Paper Company. National City sometimes turned to him to help salvage failing companies that couldn’t repay loans.

Today, Lanci owns two companies on Cleveland’s near East Side, including printing company Consolidated Graphics Group. He says he’ll work for $1 a year if elected, as a way of giving back.

Lanci says job growth would be his top priority by far. He wants to work closely with the developers of the Medical Mart, the casino, and the $150 million renovation of St. Vincent Charity Hospital to develop training programs for local workers that fit the employers’ needs. He praises the current county government’s efforts to build the Medical Mart, calling it “the cornerstone of Cleveland’s future.” Beyond that, he says the county needs to say yes to business deals, not throw up obstacles.

Candidates like Lanci flare up in politics now and then: Centrist businessmen who run against both parties, appealing to voters who distrust politicians and think government needs more financial discipline. But the CEO candidates’ big challenge is to prove they understand how government works.

Judging by my interview with Lanci, he’s not there yet. I asked him to critique the performance of the county’s economic development department. He said he couldn’t.

“There are a lot of things I can’t comment on without getting in the belly of the beast,” he said. “I’m not promising anything until I get inside. But when I get inside, I will report on a regular basis what we find and how it’s going.”

He said he’s reviewed the county government’s 2009 and 2010 budgets, but can’t tell if its spending is well-disciplined: “I don’t know how much effort really goes into the individual departments to see the efficiencies.”

This sounds too much like, Trust me, I'll figure it out. Before voters can trust him as a turnaround expert, Lanci needs to show that his business turnaround experience is relevant to county government: He needs to apply his expertise to the county's challenges and tell voters what he'll do if elected.

The new county council will approve the county executive’s budget and appointments. That could be an adjustment for Lanci, a private-company CEO. I asked Lanci what relevant experience he had at needing approval from people who don’t work for him. His answer suggested he expects conflict, not cooperation.

“In government, I am working for the people; so are they,” he says. “They just need to be held accountable to work for the people, not the parties anymore. That’s what I plan on doing.”

Starting new companies has taught Lanci the importance of inspirational leadership, he says. “The employees of any company or any government are the backbone. If you don’t get buy-in from the people that are working with you, then you can’t do anything.” He suggests the new county exec will have to balance house-cleaning after scandal with retaining the government’s best talent. “There’s no secret there’s been a lot of patronage over the years,” he said, but added: “I have to believe there’s a lot of very capable, qualified people out of the 7,500 that are still there. … This is not going to be a wholesale firing.”

I asked Lanci about the fears that the new county government would not address minorities’ concerns. He said he was skeptical about “set-aside” programs, but wasn’t inclined to alter the county’s small business enterprise program, which benefits many minority contractors. At Lanci’s companies, minorities are about 29 out of 150 employees, he says. He’s set up a small apprenticeship program with the Cleveland schools for students interested in the graphic arts. His biggest philanthropic efforts, Project Love and Gift of Sight, focus their efforts in the city, he says.

Lanci’s political donations have covered both parties: He gave to Joe Cimperman’s 2008 Democratic primary campaign for Congress against Dennis Kucinich, Lee Fisher’s current Democratic primary run for U.S. Senate; Republican Ken Blackwell’s 2006 campaign for governor, and the McCain campaign and the Ohio Republican Party in fall 2008. He says he likes Cimperman’s energy, Fisher’s experience, Blackwell’s support for small business, and Sarah Palin’s advocacy for special-needs children.

Lanci’s biography includes an unusual family tie: his older brother, Thomas Lanci, was convicted of bribery and racketeering in federal court and pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in state court in connection with the 1977 bombing death of Danny Greene – the most legendary organized-crime murder in Cleveland’s recent history. (Thomas Lanci now lives outside Ohio and does not talk to reporters, Ken says.)

Lanci says he’s often had to address his brother’s crimes in his professional life. “If you can imagine walking with a ball and chain for a while, that’s how I would describe it.” In the late 1970s, the FBI spent a few days at Lanci’s printing business to ascertain that it had no financial ties to his brother. Lanci says he later passed rigorous federal-government background checks before assuming control of Northeast Wine Distributors and becoming a director of Independence Bank. “If everybody was disqualified for family relationships, we’d have a lot of openings all over the place,” he says.

Lanci says he’ll refuse donations from county employees and political action committees and all donations above $250. Since the new charter doesn’t include campaign finance limits, “I decided to start my own campaign reform,” he says. “Somebody’s got to take the lead. And because I can, I am.” If donations don’t raise enough, Lanci says he’ll personally spend what’s necessary to be competitive. Political veterans tell him he’ll need $1.5 million.