FitzGerald delivers State of the County, with glances statewide

I counted only two rips into Gov. John Kasich in Ed FitzGerald's State of the County address today. Though statewide media came to cover his speech, and a new poll today says FitzGerald is only 5 points behind Kasich in the governor's race, never did the Cuyahoga County executive mention his November opponent by name. He merely criticized the state for cutting the local government fund and not spending more on early childhood education.

Instead, FitzGerald offered a progress report on his agenda, from his early reforms to a lightning-round list of initiatives at the speech's end. He portrayed himself as impatient to create change, not just change jobs.

"Our priority in year one was to restore public trust," said FitzGerald, recounting his role in dismantling the old county government's patronage regime. "The pursuit of excellence replaced politics," he claimed -- true on one level, but funny coming from a candidate for higher office.

Movement, progress, optimism -- FitzGerald aimed to project all three. As usual, he announced new initiatives during the annual address. He wants to wants to issue $50 million in bonds to tear down abandoned houses. "Our economic recovery is still hobbled by thousands of properties which, unfortunately, are beyond salvaging through renovation." It's an issue he hasn't taken on in a big way until now.  

"County government in the last few years has been a battleground between those who have given up on Cleveland and those who will never give up on Cleveland," FitzGerald asserted -- which left me wondering who represents the give-up caucus. 

But the rhetorical move helps him as a local leader and a candidate for governor. Locally, it's the pol's rhetorical version of slipping on a CLE Clothing Co. T-shirt, an embrace of town pride. Statewide, holding his address in the new convention center and declaring that "the list of downtown projects is unlike anything that any of us have seen happen here in a generation" heads off Republican attempts to use Cleveland's struggles against him downstate.

FitzGerald also announced the county will take over operations of the Cleveland and Euclid jails. That gave him a chance to praise Mayor Frank Jackson (whom Kasich has also courted). It also helped him talk about regionalism, an area where he's had to temper expectations.  

Three years ago, FitzGerald helped Orange, Pepper Pike, Moreland Hills and Woodmere launch merger talks.  That idea has faded.  Buzz about a Cleveland-East Cleveland merger arose late last year. FitzGerald implied he doesn't see that happening either. 

"Regionalism in the near term is only likely to be expressed through shared services," he said. He touted the services the county offers to towns, and again suggested they could build the trust necessary for a big metropolitan government someday. Working on shared services is "not as exciting as a merger in one fell swoop, but it has the distinct advantage of being real."

The City Club sponsored the event, and in its traditional Q and A, FitzGerald faced only one tough, conservative questioner: David Tryon, an attorney and local Federalist Society leader. Their exchange sounded more like the debate ahead in the governor's race than anything else today. 

"Cuyahoga County has the highest taxes and fees" in Ohio, Tryon said. "They hurt people who can’t afford tickets to events like this. Why not decrease the sales tax and reduce fees?"

FitzGerald portrayed the questioner as a laissez-faire libertarian and argued that his a has justified a government with a larger role. "I suppose we could have cut taxes," he said rhetorically, "and reduced the number of sheriff’s deputies, or not funded universal pre-kindergarten or early childhood education." 

FitzGerald the reformer, FitzGerald the loyal Democrat

Ed FitzGerald, scourge of patronage machines and ally of public employee unions -– the Cuyahoga County executive will have to lay claim to both reputations if he’s going to run for governor. He tried to do that in one key part of his State of the County address yesterday, but if you slow it down for the replay, you can hear the strain.

First, he cited some figures that, if you weren’t listening carefully, might’ve led you to think he’s cut county government by 30 percent.

Personnel costs are our number one expenditure, and that was our number one focus for reducing costs. There is a frequently repeated myth about government that it always gets larger, it can never become more efficient, and we have proven that wrong. In 2007, there were 6,374 county employees, and at the end of 2012 we were down to 4,507, a reduction of over 1,800 positions.

Today, that last line made it to the front page of The Plain Dealer, without anyone asking, hey, how much of that reduction is FitzGerald responsible for? The answer, according to county budget documents I looked at, is somewhere around 280 to 433 positions. FitzGerald took office in January 2011. Before that, the old county commissioners actually shed roughly 1,500 employees because declining tax revenues forced them to.

FitzGerald did take on the harder work of cutting union employees. He’s eliminated at least 350 unionized positions, county records show -- about as many as the county commissioners cut in 3½ years. But of course he can’t brag about that if he’s going to run for governor. Public employee unions, still enraged at Gov. John Kasich for signing Senate Bill 5, will provide a lot of the fervor, volunteers and cash for Kasich’s challenger next year.

So FitzGerald executed this quick reverse-twirl in his speech, a move from reformer to union-friendly liberal.

We have 31 separate bargaining units we negotiate with, and we have asked all of them to work with us to contain costs, and they have responded. Now, I know there are some who believe the road to good government runs right over the government worker. But I don’t believe that you can serve the people by attacking the people’s employees. In this process, our unions agreed to unprecedented concessions. County employees were part of the solution.

That, of course, is a dig at Kasich -- FitzGerald’s biggest one-eye-on-Columbus line of the day.

FitzGerald burnishes reformer credentials, floats new Great Lakes Expo in State of County speech

Ed FitzGerald tackled a political challenge of his own making today. How could he deliver a State of the County address without sounding like he’s running for governor? His answer: a pair of headline-making announcements and the latest hard sell of his reformer credentials.

First, FitzGerald announced that the Medical Mart has a new name, more vague, less blatantly commercial, more aspirational: the Global Center for Health Innovation. The name change seems inspired by the Cleveland Clinic’s Medical Innovation Summit, which will open in the Mart Center in October. It could also be borrowed from the latest announced tenant. FitzGerald announced that the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society will locate its Innovation Center here. It’s another win for the ever-strengthening project. The HIMSS center, which will take up most of a floor, was going to be an anchor in the failed Nashville medical mart.

Next, FitzGerald called for Cleveland to host a sequel to the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-1937 in three years. Indulging a bit of history geekiness, he talked about how FDR pressed a button on the White House desk to open the Expo gate and later visited the grounds. Maybe, he speculated in the Q and A, a new expo could be based on medicine and music, like the 1930s expo was based on Cleveland’s industries of the time. Or it could be based on music and performing arts, entrepreneurship and local food. Or “it could be all those things or none of those things,” he said, trying to leave room for others in town to add their ideas.

Ever since the Great Lakes Expo lit up our waterfront with its carnival midway, its exotic Streets of the World and its towering art deco architecture, reviving it has been a recurring civic dream. Dennis Kucinich floated the idea in the 1970s. But world’s fairs, or almost-world’s-fairs, have a tougher go of it today than in those Depression years before the Travel Channel and frequent-flier flights to Europe. My advice to FitzGerald: think less about a sequel to the Romance of Iron and Steel and more about recruiting great characters who can stir up a bit of scandal. Who’ll be our Billy Rose, our Eleanor Holm, our Toto Laverne?

Near the start of the speech, you could learn a lot about FitzGerald by listening to him execute a pair of moves. First, he gave thanks for the federal corruption investigation, singling out U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach in the audience and issuing him a “long overdue thank you for your zealous pursuit of corruption and support for integrity.” (The corruption probe started before Dettelbach took the job, and he’s had to recuse himself from it, but minor point, I guess.)

Then FitzGerald called the corruption probe Phase One of the effort to clean up Cuyahoga County government and called his administration’s efforts Phase Two. “We dismantled the political patronage machine which was choking county government,” he said. FitzGerald’s opposition to patronage seems genuine and proven. But he’s still executing a clever pirouette, dancing past the real Phase Two, the Issue 6 campaign that created a new county government system. FitzGerald, awkwardly, opposed the charter he now governs under, a fact that still complicates his reformer persona.

FitzGerald made one other revealing move. It was the one moment when you could hear his gubernatorial ambitions loud and clear. I'll post about it tomorrow.

Regionalism plan leads FitzGerald’s State of the County proposals

Hoping to unify Greater Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald officially revealed his plan for the county to offer municipal services in his State of the County address today.

“For the first time, cities won’t have a monopoly on providing services,” Fitzgerald said during his speech at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, broadcast live on WCPN. “Over time, we will have the prospect of becoming a cohesive metropolitan area.”

FitzGerald sneak-previewed his proposal a month ago in my interview with him for the January-February issue of Inside Business. Today, he reiterated his argument that the plan offers a way to move beyond Cuyahoga County’s futile, century-old debate about regional unity.

“Our patchwork of individual kingdoms is powerless to execute any strategy to compete in a global economy,” FitzGerald argued. But Ohio cities’ strong home-rule powers make a full consolidation of city and suburbs into a single government nearly impossible, he added.

So FitzGerald wants the county to offer several new services to cities each year, from information technology to infrastructure maintenance. Cities would sign up voluntarily, or still provide services on their own. But FitzGerald said the effort would eventually lead to a “county-wide, metropolitan government” that could better compete with more unified metro areas across the country.

The regionalism proposal was the highlight of his speech’s 12-point agenda, which he called the Western Reserve Plan. It includes two more new initiatives he described in IB's latest issue: a “pay for success” formula for delivering human services and pledge to use the county’s casino tax revenue to improve downtown Cleveland and the lakefront.

FitzGerald also announced a pilot program to buy homes on the verge of foreclosure, a plan to help returning military veterans, a health and wellness initiative and an economic inclusion task force. With a nod to the Jimmy Dimora corruption trial in Akron, FitzGerald concluded by promising to fight any attempt to return to the county’s “old ways” of patronage and cronyism.

“I’ll do everything possible in my power to prevent that,” he said.

FitzGerald #1 on Inside Business Power 100

No one has done more to change Northeast Ohio in the last year than Ed FitzGerald.

That’s why he tops this year's Power 100, the list of the region's most powerful players, in the new issue of Cleveland Magazine's sister publication, Inside Business.

The Cuyahoga County executive has helped to restore confidence in the government he leads by upending a longstanding patronage system. He's also stepped into some of our biggest civic conversations, from regionalism to downtown Cleveland’s future -- expanding our sense of how a political leader can lead.

And he showed a shrewd understanding of power in his high-drama negotiations with Secretary of State Jon Husted over how Ohioans vote by mail.

He's the first politician to be #1 on the Power 100 list since Inside Business began publishing the issue in 2004.

FitzGerald still faces many challenges. His successes on economic development and regional cooperation are modest so far, his housecleaning may be making him enemies in his party, and the political critique of him as an opportunist could resurface since he’s not ruling out a run for governor in 2014.

But he's going to push the limits of local political power again this year. Not only is he about to debut a $100 million county economic development fund, FitzGerald tells Inside Business he'll announce three new policy initiatives at his Feb. 1 State of the County speech.

FitzGerald says he wants human service programs to include strategies for “changing outcomes” — the teach-a-man-to-fish school of social aid. He wants to use the county's casino revenues downtown and on the lakefront. And he wants to advance regionalism by having Cuyahoga County offer to contract with cities to provide some municipal services.

“If you’re talking about having the county emerging over time, possibly in years or decades to come, as the primary provider of [a lot of] municipal service, the county starts to become the city,” FitzGerald told me. “This whole county starts becoming a unified community from a governmental point of view. We’d start becoming one of the larger cities in the U.S., as opposed to the traditional barrier between the city and county."

You can read my article on FitzGerald here and in the January-February issue of Inside Business, published today. You can see who else made the Power 100 list here.