After an easy win, will Armond Budish keep his promise?

Today, at Armond Budish’s first press conference after his victory in the Cuyahoga County executive race, I asked him to name the most difficult moment in his campaign.

He had to think.

“Waking up this morning at 5 a.m. to do a television interview,” Budish said finally, “after [being up] last night and being at the polls all day yesterday.”

Before Election Day, I doubt the guy lost much sleep. Budish was the race’s front-runner from start to finish, ever since Ed FitzGerald and other key Democrats anointed him as FitzGerald’s successor in May 2013.

Jack Schron, Budish’s Republican opponent, was well-qualified and ran a visible, pretty assertive race. That won Schron 41 percent of the vote -- the best performance in 10 years by a Republican sacrificial lamb in a countywide election.

Now Budish and Schron will have to co-exist. Schron ran for executive from a safe seat on the county council, and he chairs its economic development committee. Today, Budish suggested Schron could help with a goal both men share: matching county job training programs with available local jobs.

“[Schron] talked a lot about a business he created to train workers for the jobs that exist,” Budish said. “That’s certainly an area we need to focus on. I look forward to working with him.”

Continuity, not change, was the mood of the day. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” I heard a guy, probably a county employee, say just before the press conference.

Budish’s agenda sounds similar to FitzGerald’s. Today he announced he’s forming his transition team, with three panels to take on his major goals.

An economic growth team will work on attracting new businesses to the region, supporting small businesses, aligning jobs and training, and creating “pathways out of poverty for people who want to work hard.” A regional team will explore ways to make college more affordable, advance clean energy, and deal with foreclosed homes, infant mortality and the health of Lake Erie. A third team will aim to make the government more cost-effective and responsive.

Budish said it’s too early to talk about his cabinet. But it doesn’t sound like he’ll clean house.

“We’ll look at everybody. We'll look at people who are here. We'll look at others,” Budish said. “There’s no plan at this point for making changes. We’ll make changes as needed.”

On hiring, Budish faces a test. He’s a loyal, partisan Democrat with a lot of connections.

He’s taking over five years after voters’ revulsion at patronage and cronyism convinced them to create a new county government. Now, many voters have moved on to new concerns. It’d be easier today to stack a cabinet with party loyalists.

This spring, I asked Budish if he’d root out patronage as aggressively as FitzGerald.

“Absolutely,” he said.

I asked how he’d deal with job requests from political allies.

“Nobody has been promised anything, nor will anyone be promised anything, during this campaign,” Budish said. “Anybody who is hired for any job will only be hired if they are the most qualified person for that job.”

Many people who worked hard to break up the Democratic patronage machine five years ago are nervous about Budish's election. Now that he’s hiring, it’s time for the public and press to hold him to his promise.

Will unlimited donations flood county exec race?

How much money should a single wealthy person be allowed to give candidates for Cuyahoga County executive?

$1,000? $5,000? $12,000? $25,000?

How about $100,000? $300,000? Or $400,000?

Guess what? Due to a huge gap in the law, there’s no limit to what one person can donate to a candidate for county office.

This hole is big enough to buy a government through. It should’ve been plugged when we got a new county government. But proposals to fix it have gone nowhere.

Now, there’s finally some hope for change. Cuyahoga County’s charter review commission is considering two proposals to cut off the unlimited flow of money starting in 2014. It’s set to debate both ideas at its meeting Saturday morning, the 15th.*

It’s time for someone to act. Candidates are already running to succeed Ed FitzGerald next year – and right now, millionaires are free to invest five-figure or six-figure donations in them, in hopes of getting VIP access once they’re in office.

Races for federal, state, and Cleveland offices have sensible limits on one person’s ability to influence a candidate with donations. You can only give a candidate for president or Congress $2,600 a year. In Cleveland’s mayor and city council races, it’s $1,000. Ohio has much higher limits on donations to candidates for state office -- $12,300 this year – but that’s better than nothing.

The framers of the new county charter should have established limits on donations in 2009. But they didn’t. They unwisely punted the decision to the very elected leaders who stand to benefit from big donations.

During the transition to the new government, an advisory group suggested limits of $750 per election cycle to county council candidates and $1,000 to candidates for executive and prosecutor.

But the new county council failed to act. It debated whether to adopt the statewide limits of $12,300 as its own, or lower limits, but did neither.

Now, the charter review commission -- which has until July 1 to propose amendments to the county charter -- is considering two campaign finance reform ideas.

One proposed amendment would explicitly give the county council the power or duty to enact campaign finance laws, including limits on donations. That would prod the council to act.

The other comes from charter commission member William Tarter. He proposes amending the county charter to establish the same limit per donor in county races as in state races, $12,300.

Tarter says limits on huge contributions help empower smaller donors. “This is an opportunity for people to feel their contribution has a greater impact on the candidates,” he says.

Bruce Akers, chairman of the charter review commission, says the panel is “very divided” on the subject of campaign finance. Some members support Tarter’s idea. Others support new charter language that would nudge the council to act. One member is opposed to taking any action about campaign finance at all.

Citizens who want to limit big money’s influence on our local politics ought to get involved in this debate right away. But they face a dilemma. Should they back Tarter’s more specific proposal to link county donor limits to the state’s high limits? Or back an amendment that would put the issue back before the county council -- which might enact lower limits, but might enact none at all?

Tarter’s proposal would, at least, stop the biggest checks from flowing. And the last race for county executive proves it’s time to make a change.

In 2010, candidate Matt Dolan got contributions of $400,000 from his uncle, Charles Dolan of Cablevision, and $300,000 from his father, Indians owner Larry Dolan. The next six-figure donations may not be a family affair.

Big checks flowed to the old county government too. Before the late developer Dick Jacobs sold the Ameritrust complex to Cuyahoga County in 2005, he had a five-figure donor relationship with commissioners Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones. Jacobs seeded their first campaigns for commission seats, giving Dimora $36,000 in 1998 and Jones in 2002.

Maybe Jacobs’ donations had nothing to do with the county’s unwise purchase of the Ameritrust complex, which led to an $18 million loss for taxpayers. But it’s a spectacular example of why no single donor should dominate an elected leader’s campaign fund -- and why campaign finance limits are the Cuyahoga County reform effort's biggest unfinished business.

*Update, 6/10: I originally wrote that the charter commission would discuss campaign finance "this Saturday," meaning the 8th. The commission ended up not tackling it on the 8th.  It'll take up the question on the 15th.

FitzGerald: Calabrese holds key to 2005 Ameritrust inquiry

The Ameritrust debacle is almost over. Cuyahoga County is on the verge of selling the old bank complex for $27 million -- or $18 million less than it spent on it.

But there’s still a major question about the old government’s 2005 purchase of the Ameritrust complex. Will the public ever know if it was just an unwise deal, or if wrongdoing was involved?

County executive Ed FitzGerald thinks attorney and corruption defendant Anthony Calabrese III knows the answer, and he wants county prosecutor Tim McGinty to get it out of him.

“You asked what the chances are the public will ever know,” FitzGerald said to me last week. “I think Mr. Calabrese knows! And I think he has even more incentive to be cooperative with the county.”

Calabrese (pictured), the last defendant to plead guilty in the federal government’s Cuyahoga County corruption probe, finally admitted to 18 corruption crimes this month. But federal prosecutors agreed to drop the one charge that involved the Ameritrust complex.

Meanwhile, McGinty has charged Calabrese in county court with conspiring to bribe two rape victims to change their testimony. Calabrese has pleaded not guilty.

McGinty’s office says the county and federal cases are unrelated. Still, FitzGerald thinks McGinty could use the new bribery charge as leverage to get to the bottom of the Ameritrust affair.

“Somebody that is a central figure in the Ameritrust transaction is also facing county charges,” FitzGerald said. “It gives them a pretty good incentive to cooperate.”

In 2005, Calabrese was an attorney representing The Staubach Co., the county’s real estate consultant. Last June, federal prosecutors alleged that Calabrese asked J. Kevin Kelley to lobby Jimmy Dimora to buy the Ameritrust complex and promised to reward him if the county went through with the sale. Two months after the deal went through, Kelley received $70,000 and a company with a tie to Calabrese received $99,000 from unidentified sources, prosecutors claimed.

The FBI and IRS began probing the Ameritrust project in 2007. They investigated whether any money from Staubach was “funneled through others for the ultimate benefit of public officials” – but they couldn’t make a case. Instead, they charged Calabrese with witness tampering in connection with the Ameritrust affair, claiming that in August 2008, after the FBI raids on county offices, Calabrese met with Kelley and made false statements about the company that had given Kelley the $70,000.

But it looks like the feds are done digging into the Ameritrust purchase. They agreed to drop the witness tampering charge against Calabrese in exchange for his guilty pleas on the 18 other charges (his role in Dimora’s Vegas trip, etc.). And Calabrese’s plea agreement does not include any agreement to cooperate with the federal probe.

If federal prosecutors have dropped the Ameritrust affair, it may be because it’s too late for them to dig deeper. There’s a five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes, including the bribery and extortion statutes often used in public corruption cases. The Ameritrust deal went down 7½ years ago.

In state court, most felonies have a six-year statute of limitations. That leaves one more approach, a lawsuit.

“I have had extensive conversations with prosecutor McGinty about taking civil action,” FitzGerald said last week.

His administration’s two investigations of the Ameritrust purchase appear to have formed his brief for McGinty. Inspector general Nailah Byrd told me her inquiry has been forwarded to another agency she couldn’t name. Law director Majeed Makhlouf, who was also looking into the Ameritrust affair, says he has discussed it with McGinty. “I think he’s interested in it as well,” Makhlouf says.

FitzGerald has made it clear he’d like to sue the former Staubach Co., which made $3 million in broker’s fees off the 2005 Ameritrust purchase. The county executive is a former FBI agent, and the deal seems to have reawakened his investigatory instincts. And, of course, the more mismanagement by the old government he can uncover, the more he burnishes his reformer credentials -- at the same time he’s exploring a run for governor.

Staubach’s potential defense seems clear. Rob Roe of Staubach (now part of Jones Lang LaSalle) told me last year that the old county government actually disregarded his company’s advice about the Ameritrust complex. Roe also said nothing about Calabrese’s conduct while representing Staubach appeared improper or gave him pause, and that Calabrese never talked with him about using any connections in county government to help with the contract.

McGinty’s spokesperson declined to comment about FitzGerald’s comments, saying the office couldn't comment about an open investigation. Calabrese’s federal attorney, Chad Ziepfel, also declined comment.

We’ll see if Calabrese talks to McGinty about the Ameritrust complex. Maybe he won’t. He already faces a likely nine-year sentence in federal prison, and that didn’t motivate him to cooperate with the feds.

Is time running out for county action on the Ameritrust purchase? Normally, lawsuits over contracts in Ohio have an eight-year statute of limitations, which would bar a suit from being filed after this September. But McGinty could possibly use this law, which says a prosecutor can sue for damages over a county contract “procured by fraud or corruption.” It’s not clear whether that law has a time limit attached.

(Photos: Cuyahoga County Sheriff, clevelandskyscrapers.com)

FitzGerald plan: sell Ameritrust Tower for $27 million, have new county HQ built next door

The Ameritrust Tower and rotunda, ghosts on downtown Cleveland's landscape since 1996, could be revived if Ed FitzGerald gets his way.

Cuyahoga County's executive wants to sell the Brutalist high-rise and the classic bank building for $27 million to Geis Co., which would build a new county headquarters next to the tower and lease it to the county for about $6.5 million a year.

The new, eight-story headquarters at East 9th Street and Prospect Avenue would share two parking garages and a new pedestrian bridge with the 29-story tower, which would be converted into apartments. The rotunda would house stores and possibly a public space.

If the county council approves the deal next month, construction would start right away and could be finished by July 2014, FitzGerald says.

The Geis Co. proposal could exorcise a controversial deal that has haunted the county since 2005. The previous government bought the Ameritrust complex that year for about $22 million as a site for a county HQ, then spent an equal amount ridding it of asbestos, paying its broker and buying a second parking garage.

With the sale, the county would recoup more than half of its $45 million investment. It would also move out of the 1950s-era administration building at Lakeside and Ontario and other offices around town.

"The building we're in now is outdated, inefficient, and duplicative," FitzGerald said during an interview today. His consultants project that the county could lower its annual occupancy costs by $6 million by moving. So the county would recoup its losses on the Ameritrust complex over time.

In a way, FitzGerald is bringing the county full circle, back to East 9th and the same headquarters site that Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan, and Peter Lawson Jones picked in 2005. But there are big differences between the old and new plans.

Dimora and Hagan wanted to tear down the tower and build a much larger headquarters than the 222,000-square-foot building FitzGerald and Geis envision. The old plan also had the county constructing and owning the headquarters. Geis' offer is a sell-build-lease deal with an option to buy after 26 years.

FitzGerald is confident the county will lower the cost of government by moving. But that could depend on a lot of things going right. That includes his hopes of selling the current administration building site, which is right next to the medical mart and convention center, to a hotel developer.

But FitzGerald doesn't have a buyer for the site yet. He didn't get an offer he liked in this round of bidding. He hopes to try again in the new year, perhaps after the convention center opens.

The county has for-sale signs on 13 properties, including the old juvenile justice center and the county archives building in Ohio City. Announcements about the sale of several more should come in January or February, FitzGerald said.

The public will have about 45 days to examine the Ameritrust and headquarters deal and the alternatives the county rejected. County council president C. Ellen Connally says the council will hold meetings on the proposal tonight and Jan. 2, 8, and 22.

Cleveland.com commenters halt county jail contract

Cleveland.com's comment sections are usually a malicious playland of thinly veiled racism, hall-of-mirrors impersonations, innuendo and sputtering rage, dominated by anonymous trolls expressing the community's dark, unchained id.

But this week, citizen watchdogs waded into the online mud and accomplished something. Able Googlers jumped onto a cleveland.com page, spontaneously crowd-sourced, and flagged a contractor's questionable record. They got a Plain Dealer reporter to ask some tough questions and got the Cuyahoga County government to hold up a contract award.

It started this Sunday, when the paper published an article about the growing cost of replacing the county jail's 37-year-old kitchen. A builders association president's complaints blamed the price increase, from $5 million to $6 million, on the county's decision to require union labor.

But readers noticed something else. The firm poised to win the contract, Brigadier Construction Services, was partially owned by Frederick D. Perkins. His family has a long history of getting government contracts in Cleveland and elsewhere -- and their companies' structures and business relationships have often come under scrutiny.

The commenters linked to a 2008 Plain Dealer investigation of several companies owned by members of the Perkins and Cifani families, which asked whether the companies were structured in a way that allowed them to take advantage of government set-aside programs for minority-owned contractors.

They also pointed to a Dayton Daily News article that showed Brigadier had been banned from a federal contracting program for companies owned by disabled veterans. The feds found that Shawnté Thompson, a disabled vet and part-owner, did not really control the company. Instead, it seemed largely controlled by McTech, a local company owned by Mark Perkins, Frederick D. Perkins' brother.

A reader e-mailed me, too, remembering the Perkins family from my July 2005 story "Inside the Nate Gray Case." Frederick D. appears to be the son of Fred and Gail Perkins of Choice Construction, a now-defunct local contractor whose offices were raided by the FBI in 2000.  Choice Construction figured prominently in my story, which examined the ties between Gray and several local minority-owned companies that rose to prominence due to generous contract awards from Cleveland City Hall during the Mike White administration.

At one point, the feds charged Choice with acting as a front company for white-owned companies, though the charge was dropped. Fred Perkins pled guilty to campaign-finance law violations, Gail Perkins to filing a false tax return. The FBI scrutinized Choice, McTech, and Perk Co. (a third company once owned by a Perkins) as part of the Gray investigation, though no charges of wrongdoing resulted.

The posts on cleveland.com led Plain Dealer reporter Laura Johnston to the Dayton article, which led her to court documents about Brigadier's federal ban.  Yesterday Johnston asked county executive Ed FitzGerald about the questions surrounding Brigadier, and he responded by pulling the contract from last night's council agenda.  FitzGerald said he would invite Brigadier's owners to meet with him and defend themselves.

In a well-deserved Twitter hat-tip, Johnston thanked cleveland.com commenters for pointing her to the Dayton article. Tipsters are as old as reporting, and reporters are nothing without sources. But online, we can connect and research faster than ever.

In Cleveland right now, we need that immediacy.  Watching the questions about Brigadier spread  reminded me of our columnist Michael D. Roberts' argument that the Nate Gray and Jimmy Dimora corruption scandals indicted the public and the press for a lack of vigilance. This week, we saw how it ought to work.

Update, 10/13: Brigadier got the contract.  I don't expect we've heard the last of this, though.  It raises the question of whether the county's proposed ban on contractors who've violated various rules should include companies who've gotten in trouble with other governments.

Dimora’s Last Tango in Akron: The Math of Corruption

The door opened, and Jimmy Dimora entered the courtroom, slowly, still hurt from a fall in prison, leaning on a walker that clicked with each step. Without his once-familiar beard, his face looked beaky.

He didn’t look much like the man who’d spent a dozen years as Greater Cleveland’s most powerful politician, controlling the local Democratic Party and voting on Cuyahoga County’s billion-dollar budget. Until he sat down at the defense table and took his glasses from his shirt pocket. Then, for a moment, Dimora looked like he had just 1½ years ago, sitting at the county commissioners’ table, ready for the proceedings.

The judge read the 32 corruption crimes he committed, including 22 counts of bribery and extortion. Then came a legal matter that disappointed everyone hoping for swift justice or swift mercy.

Dimora’s attorneys kicked off a marathon attempt to buy the ailing 57-year-old defendant more of a chance to get out of prison alive someday. The math of corruption took over most of the day: how much Dimora was really bribed, whether the bribe or the thing acquired by bribing him should be held against him in the judge’s “loss calculation.”

Along the way, we got our final reminders of several of Dimora’s most ridiculous sprees of greed, gluttony, and lust.

At one point, defense attorney Andrea Whitaker found herself arguing that Dimora didn’t deserve blame for all the cash paid to prostitutes during a casino trip to Windsor. “The woman -- I don’t remember her real name, her stage name was Egypt -- performed dances for various people on the trip,” she pointed out.

At another point, assistant prosecutor Antoinette Bacon insisted she had counted the hooker money right. “This is only the amount the prostitutes received to service commissioner Dimora,” she asserted.

Later, the talk turned to food. “The value of the bribe should be the full value of the Delmonico’s dinner,” Bacon argued.

The Beanie Wells jersey Dimora bid $3,600 on at a Cornerstone of Hope auction also made an encore appearance. Whitaker argued it was only worth $200, since it’s only attracted $50 on eBay. (Update, 7/31: Maybe I misunderstood. There are many, many Beanie Wells jerseys on eBay, and none are fetching $3,600.)

The prosecutors had run up the score, putting their “loss calculation” at a massive $3 million. Dimora’s attorneys fought back using the few arguments left in his tattered defense: that he’d only put a good word in for his friends, not steered any contracts; that he hadn’t done anything that cost the county money.

With some schemes, Judge Sara Lioi agreed. In the sex-for-favors conviction involving Bedford courts employee Gina Coppers, prosecutors wanted to include Coppers’ salary as a “loss.” The defense countered that Coppers has actually been a good employee. Lioi sided with Dimora on that, holding him liable only for the $121 cost of the room at the Holiday Inn in Independence where he rendezvoused with Coppers.

All the while, Dimora’s family took up two rows in the courtroom gallery, wife and kids in front. Behind them sat the extended family: a row of seven Italian-looking guys and one woman, a sort of peanut gallery that scoffed when Bacon made an especially strident argument or Lioi added another dollar figure to Dimora’s tab. At one point, the judge held Dimora liable for $6,000 that businessman Ferris Kleem gave Frank Russo as part of the three men’s conspiracy. “What’s Jimmy got to do with that?” a relative exclaimed.

Dimora’s argument that his corruption hadn’t tapped the county treasury held up well, with two exceptions. Lioi ruled that county judges had decided to deny the Alternatives Agency halfway house any more funding, until Dimora called the chief judge and talked him into giving it another $300,000. And Jay Ross, former central services director, hadn’t wanted or needed to hire two union plumbers during a budget crisis, but Dimora had ordered him to, the judge recalled.

“Mr. Dimora gave new life to, resurrected, recreated Alternatives Agency [funding] and the plumbing positions on his own,” the judge said.

By the end, the defense had knocked the prosecutors’ $3 million “loss calculation” down to $451,000. That may inch him down a bit in the sentencing guidelines – or it may not, says Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor.

A gloomy buzz passed across the gallery when Lioi said the sentencing hearing would go into tomorrow. But first, the defense called five character witnesses, to revive an even more tattered part of Dimora’s defense – Jimmy the nice guy.

The witnesses all described the Dimora that Cleveland’s political culture was still willing to recall three years ago when I reported my profile of Dimora, “Life of the Party.”

Old family friend Andrew Getner testified that Dimora “never missed a funeral” and remembered his relatives’ names after not seeing them for 20 years. Dimora’s daughter and next-door neighbor portrayed him as a loving family man.

William J. Day, a lawyer from Brecksville, testified that Dimora had gotten his developmentally disabled son jobs with the county recorder and auditor’s offices (Frank Russo’s office, I presume). Was his son still working there? Day was asked. “No, the new regime has slaughtered thousands of employees,” Day replied.

Bedford Heights city council president Phillip Saunders started strong, describing how Dimora smoothed over tense race relations when African-Americans moved to town in the ‘80s. But soon he was reduced to raving about Dimora’s friendliness with seniors at the Jimmy Dimora Community Center and his schmoozing ways on the rubber-chicken circuit. “Jimmy Dimora could eat!” Saunders exclaimed. “He was eating pancakes, two or three dinners a day, because he had to go to these programs.”

Can FitzGerald keep county HQ proposals secret? Should he?

I saw the first signs a few months ago, but I never thought it'd be this bad.  Ed FitzGerald is asserting the right to lease a new Cuyahoga County headquarters, sell 13 public buildings, and maybe string together a mega-deal to do it all with one developer, without letting the public see the proposals until the contracts are signed.*

In other words, the county executive is launching a new headquarters search that's less transparent than the infamous Ameritrust deal.  And a four-year-old state law may allow him to do it.

I could barely believe this front-page Plain Dealer story today, "Details on county proposals won't be released to public."  But an email to me from county law director Majeed Makhlouf confirms it's true. Makhlouf quoted from a 2008 law that allows counties to use competitive sealed proposals instead of competitive sealed bidding to award contracts. The law says (bolds mine):

In order to ensure fair and impartial evaluation, proposals and any documents or other records related to a subsequent negotiation for a final contract that would otherwise be available for public inspection and copying under section 149.43 of the Revised Code shall not be available until after the award of the contract.

That law ought to anger anyone who cares about open government.

I knew secrecy was building around the county's big move earlier this year, when I asked for the appendix to a report about the county's real estate holdings and got a call from FitzGerald, who politely explained why he wasn't giving it to me.

His argument, that the report's details were a "trade secret," was fishy. He also said the appendix would give away property appraisals and hurt the county's bargaining position, a practical argument that made more sense. (See my earlier post here.)

But now, he and Makhlouf are asserting the right to tell us nothing about the bargaining positions of developers competing for a public contract -- "so officials could negotiate the best deal for selling property," as the PD paraphrases. In other words, to preserve the county's ability to play developers against each other by keeping them in the dark and bluffing!

I thought the whole point of creating a new government was to create more accountability and openness.

Think about the last search for a new county headquarters.  It was botched so badly, it cost the public tens of millions of dollars and helped bring down the old form of government.

My story about the Ameritrust affair ("Tower Play," June 2008) showed that the county commissioners bought the Ameritrust complex thinking their plan would save money, but it would actually have permanently added to the cost of government. That became clear if you dug deeply enough into the county's assumptions about the costs of leasing vs. building, the costs of financing, and the costs of maintaining, renovating, and operating offices. But if you just trusted the commissioners' assertions, you had no way of knowing they were wrong.

This time, we'll know even less about the county's plans to move. Because the administration chose to request "proposals" instead of "bids," it looks like almost all the important information will be kept secret, in closed executive sessions of the county council and in documents locked up until the contract ink is dry.*

"So I guess we're just supposed to trust the process?" Laura Johnston, the PD's county government reporter, tweeted in frustration yesterday. 

Today I talked to David Marburger, a top media lawyer in town and co-author of Access With Attitude: An Advocate's Guide to Freedom of Information in Ohio. He said the sealed proposals law may not be as black-and-white as Makhlouf says. He read the law and pointed to another section of it:

A county contracting authority shall not use competitive sealed proposals for contracts for construction, design, demolition, alteration, repair, or reconstruction of a building... 

What if the county chooses a developer's proposal to construct a brand-new headquarters building? Could it still keep the proposals secret? Or, say the county chooses to lease an existing downtown office building (as most people think it will). What if the lease calls for the landlord to alter, repair, or reconstruct the building before the county moves in? Can the proposals still be withheld?

Either way, Marburger calls the law bad policy.

"Officials are allowed to commit to a contract before the public can see what the options were and influence the outcome," he says. "That can't be in the public's interest. ... By then, it's too late to even raise questions."

*Update, 7/23: FitzGerald says the proposals will be released to the public one step before the contracts are signed, when the negotiated deals go to the county council for approval.  The county request for proposals says so too.

This is an improvement, though it leaves the public with a short window of opportunity to see and debate the options before the contracts are signed.  See item #1 in my new blog post.

The Hangover: Garson, Democrats' new chairman, promises integrity

"The Hangover," my piece on Stuart Garson, the Cuyahoga County Democrats' new chairman, is out now in the August issue of Cleveland Magazine.

Jimmy Dimora was the good-timey, devil-may-care Democratic chairman; Garson's the guy stuck cleaning up the place now that the Party's party is over. The trial lawyer and former fund-raising chair for Sherrod Brown is every bit the reluctant volunteer, but he's ready to do his part to restore voters' trust in local Democrats.

"I'm going to have a very low threshold of tolerance for any ill-toward behavior," he told me, including "anybody who's attempting to use their office to enhance their own financial gain."

My Garson piece appears on the Politically Minded page, one of the many alternating elements in Lake Effect, the magazine's front section. Politically Minded debuted in June with this piece by Ryan Dezember on Kenneth Merten, U.S. ambassador to Haiti, who's from Hudson.

Citizens' petition against Russo dropped

The petitioners who asked for an exam of Frank Russo's books have dropped their request, satisfied that state auditor Mary Taylor is going to do a performance audit.

It's a quiet ending to a great bit of political theater, in which local Republicans used an obscure, ancient law to try to scrutinize an FBI-raided government office, and the implicated official responded with punishing subpoenas.

Now that we know the feds think Russo took $1.2 million in bribes, and now that other elected officials have successfully called for the sort of review the petitioners wanted months ago, the residents have concluded their work is finished.

FitzGerald: "I may be appointed county auditor"

The Frank Russo resignation watch is heating up. Thursday afternoon, Lakewood Mayor Ed FitzGerald posted this on lakewoodbuzz.com:

It's possible that I may be appointed County Auditor due to the emergency situation currently involving that office. I'm sure some people won't like that, and some will be happy about it. I have no plans to move out of the city my family has called home since 1929. I own a home here, I'm raising my kids here, and I'm staying here.

Seven hours later, a guy with the screen name "Eugmc" posted this on clevelandleader.com:

A source has informed The Cleveland Leader that embattled Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo will be stepping down from office in the very near future. Edward Fitzgerald, currently the Mayor of the City of Lakewood, will assume the role of County Auditor, the source added. The replacement for the Mayor of Lakewood would be a high level official in the suburb.

FitzGerald's announcement is no surprise: He's been running for Russo's job all year, lobbying the party insiders who vote on mid-term appointments. But why's he going public with it now? Maybe he thinks he has the job locked up. (Mark Naymik thinks he's close.) And maybe he hears Russo's leaving soon.

I wonder if the Leader rumor came from FitzGerald's camp. Hard to say how reliable it is.

No one can make Russo leave. But the heat on him must be getting unbearable. He knows the feds think he stole $1.2 million in cash. The attorney general and state auditor are both going to pore over his office's books. Former allies want him gone. Clinging to his job until trial might have seemed easy this winter, but not so today.

FitzGerald's making a shrewd move. He's a former FBI agent, so he's attractive to Democrats who want to purge corruption before it taints the party further. FitzGerald even called attorney general Richard Cordray last month to press him to investigate Russo.

An aggressive campaigner, FitzGerald ran former mayor Tom George out of office in 2007 with a tough, scary message portraying Lakewood as a suburb on the brink, threatened by crime and aging homes. Running on the slogan "Vote like your neighborhood depended on it" (that's approximate -- I'm writing from memory here), FitzGerald won twice as many votes as George.

Earlier this year, one party insider told me FitzGerald was running too hard for Russo's job, as if the mayor's ambition was coming off as unseemly. But now it's sounding like his tenacity will pay off.

The Russo subpoenas: round 2

On WCPN's Reporters' Roundtable today, Dan Moulthrop and I talked about the subpoenas Frank Russo's lawyer fired off at the petitioners who want the county auditor's books examined. Here's a link to the show -- we talk about Russo starting at the 31:40 mark.

Russo's lawyer, John Climaco, says the exam would disrupt the county auditor's office and the state auditor's annual review of its finances. Climaco says he'll try to require the petitioners to pay for any damages. He's sent a second subpoena to county GOP chair Rob Frost -- a story about it just went up on cleveland.com. Climaco says he has a copy of an e-mail Frost used to recruit the other petitioners.

That brings up the question Moulthrop asked me on the air this morning. If Climaco can prove the petition is a Republican effort, so what? Even Cuyahoga County Republicans, that rare and reviled breed, have the right to petition the government and to join political parties. (I think that's Jeff Darcy's point in his editorial cartoon today.)

OK, so this law that Frost and the other petitioners are using is definitely old and strange. Any 20 people can force an examination of the county auditor or treasurer's books! The best evidence that it's an ancient law (almost as old as our county goverment structure itself)? The examiners get paid $3 a day!

On the other hand, the petitioners have this going for them: it's hard to call their effort frivolous when the office they want examined was raided by the FBI.

MetroHealth scandal almost revealed 5 years ago

Sometimes you can tell how good a story is by the debates it sparks on the publication's op-ed and letters pages.

Like today, when the Plain Dealer spars with William Gaskill, chairman of the board of MetroHealth, the county hospital, on page A5.

Here's the story Gaskill's angry about: "Hospital was warned of problems with exec" -- a must-read Sunday article by James McCarty about two contractors who tried to prove that MetroHealth vice-president John Carroll was steering contracts five years ago.

This month, federal prosecutors filed six federal charges against Carroll, including bribery conspiracy. He's accused of taking "travel, gift cards, home improvements and home furnishings valued at approximately $678,000" from co-defendant Nilesh Patel, a vice-president at East West Construction Company. Carroll allegedly took free trips to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Italy Japan and Singapore thanks to Patel. East-West got $51 million in contracts from MetroHealth.

In 2004, Lou Joseph and Jeff Zellers of Brewer-Garrett Corp. "complained to anyone who would listen that Carroll was stacking the deck when putting out bids," McCarty reports. They warned the hospital's then-president, then-chairwoman, and top lawyer about Carroll, complained to the county prosecutor, then sued. A judge declared their allegations showed an "appearance of impropriety" and ordered a contract rebid -- but Carroll fixed the rebidding too, the story says. The hospital did not act until an IRS audit uncovered irregularities last year. Then it fired Carroll.

Gaskill complains that "we had no credible evidence of wrongdoing by Carroll" in 2004. He notes that Zellers himself says in the article, "There were always rumors... but nothing we could substantiate." But the PD buys the ink, so it gets the last word. Its editorial on the same page asks why no one at MetroHealth seems to have bothered to watch Carroll more closely after the lawsuit. Good question.

J. Kevin Kelley, two other former county employees indicted; two unnamed elected officials also implicated

The first charges in the Cuyahoga County corruption scandal came down today. J. Kevin Kelley, the former county engineer's employee and former Parma school board president, is charged with corrupting county and Parma schools contracts. Two other former county employees also face charges.

The charging document also says two elected public officials, "PO1" and "P02," received "property not due to them" from "Business 1." The document doesn't name them (in federal prosecutors' practice of not naming uncharged people in indictments). It charges that J. Kevin Kelley provided PO1 and PO2 with gifts such as expensive meals and a trip to New Orleans, in exchange for the expectation of favors.

The description of Business 1 matches the non-profit Alternatives Agency. A fourth person indicted is Brian Schuman, a former co-executive director for Alternatives Agency. See this Plain Dealer story from March for more on the organization.

{Update, 4:20 p.m.: "I’m aware of that allegation, but have no personal knowledge to that effect," said Tom Griveas, the new executive director of Alternatives Agency. Griveas says he started his job in May, and that Schuman resigned a week later. The agency also has a new board of directors, he says. "The board of directors has wanted to take the agency in a new direction, to get away from the taint Mr. Schuman has placed on this agency. We do good work here and want to continue to do it."}

The charging document quotes conversations of J. Kevin Kelley's dating back to December 2007, suggesting that the feds may have electronically monitored Kelley.

"These charges mark the beginning of the end to the reign that a few corrupt officials have held in Cuyahoga County government," Frank Figliuzzi, head of the FBI's Cleveland office, said in a statement.

Read the U.S. Attorney's press release here and the prosecutor's court filing here.

Mansfield instructs county officials in perp walks

Anticipating indictments from the FBI probe, Mansfield B. Frazier taps into his life experience to give county officials and employees under investigation some advice: how to pull off a perp walk.

Is the county wasting our money?

Is Cuyahoga County government inefficient? Is it spending too much taxpayer money?

The Plain Dealer's three-day series says it is. See its stories about the auditor's office, the treasurer's office, and social services.

Ed Morrison at Brewed Fresh Daily agrees. But Bill Callahan at Callahan's Cleveland Diary, a talented number-cruncher, calls the series shallow and says our county government is cheaper than Ohio's other urban counties.

City sells convention center to county for $20m

The city and county have a deal. The county will pay Cleveland $20 million for the current convention center site and Public Hall, Mayor Frank Jackson and commissioner Tim Hagan announced this afternoon.

The deal removes the last main hurdle to building the Medical Mart and a new convention center. MMPI will now start marketing the new project to prospective tenants and shows, while working out financing and other details with the county.

Jackson extracted several changes to the Med Mart deal from the county. The county agreed to a new protocol for deciding which non-medical conventions should be booked into the new center. It includes a role for Positively Cleveland. The deal also spelled out more details about the benchmarks MMPI will be held to as it develops and runs the project. The city will share in the profits if the county sells the naming rights to the center. The county also agreed to more specific requirements for hiring local workers and small businesses on the project.

The county "urges" the city to spend $2.5 million of the payment for the land on renovating Perk Park on E. 12th St.

I'll post more later today.

For now, here is a link to the agreement in pdf form. It's 12 pages. (The other 37 pages of the pdf are the rules for the county's small business program, which the county agreed to get MMPI to follow.)

Dems pick Bedford's Bob Reid as new sheriff

Democrats chose Bob Reid, Bedford's city manager and safety director, as the new Cuyahoga County sheriff this morning.

Reid (pictured), who was Bedford police chief for 10 years, beat Clayton Harris, police chief and police academy commander at Cuyahoga Community College, by a 280-206 vote. Jimmy Dimora, party chairman and county commissioner, said Reid will likely take over from interim sheriff Frank Bova on Wednesday.

"Professional law enforcement will always be first," Reid promised the county Democrats' central committee members, gathered at downtown's Music Hall, before the vote. "If appointed this morning, I can assure you that the residents of Cuyahoga County will be extremely proud of the Cuyahoga County sheriff's department." Reid also promised diversity in hiring at the sheriff's office. He said he supported the efforts to process county jail prisoners faster, including early release for defendants accused of non-violent felonies.

Reid also said he would listen to his staff and value their input -- which sounds like an everyday promise unless you read today's Plain Dealer story about life under ex-sheriff Gerald McFaul. "Talented people work best when they know their opinion counts," Reid said.

Reid joined the Bedford police in 1975 and worked his way up to police chief, then switched to the civilian side of Bedford City Hall to manage the town for the mayor and city council.

Lakewood Mayor Ed FitzGerald, a Reid supporter, told me he likes Reid's combination of law-enforcement and city management experience. The sheriff's office is "crying out for professional management," FitzGerald said. "He's a good fit."

Dimora presided over the meeting, but FitzGerald told me the party chair had kept a low profile in the race. Though Dimora is reportedly a friend of Reid's, FitzGerald says he did not know of Dimora making any calls to lobby for Reid.

Reid's support came mostly from suburban mayors and councilpeople, while Harris had the backing of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge.

Most suburbs went for Reid, while most Cleveland wards went for Harris. Lots of East Side wards gave all their votes to Harris, and he won a majority in only five suburbs: Cleveland Heights, Fairview Park, East Cleveland, Shaker Heights, and Warrensville Heights. Reid racked up totals such as 30-0 in Strongsville and 11-0 in Middleburg Heights, and also won in Cleveland's Old Brooklyn, Detroit-Shoreway and West Park neighborhoods. Applause broke out when Fairview Park and Cleveland's West Side wards 18 and 19 went for Harris -- which struck me as a sign that Harris supporters were surprised and excited when a community's votes didn't follow racial lines.

Music Hall, the city's beautiful and under-used 1910s theater behind Public Auditorium, looked great in a rare public moment. Stone comedy and tragedy masks smiled and frowned at the crowd from far above the blue stage curtains. The city may sell Music Hall and Public Auditorium to the county this week as part of the convention center deal. Mayor Jackson, who was greeting Democrats on the Mall after the vote, confirmed to me that he hopes to nail down a deal on Monday.

Deal near on convention center

The city and county are nearing a deal on the convention center. "I have not finalized an agreement with the County; however, significant progress has been made," Mayor Frank Jackson said in a statement about an hour ago.

The county commissioners gave Jackson until today to accept their "final offer" of $17.5 million for the current convention center and Public Hall. Jackson wants a higher price, and also wants to protect Positively Cleveland and non-medical conventions. (See my coverage of that issue here and here.)

"The price will be higher than the “ultimatum”; and, just as importantly, my concerns surrounding agreement details that protect the public's interest are also being addressed," Jackson said in a statement released to cleveland.com (and now to me too). “I look forward to moving ahead with this very important project."

Update, Sat. a.m.: The Plain Dealer and MedCity News report that a final deal may come Monday. Jones says the purchase price will be $20 million, but Hagan disputed that, saying the mayor is reviewing a possible deal over the weekend.

Update: Sat. 1 p.m.: This morning, Mayor Frank Jackson confirmed to me that he hopes to finalize the deal on Monday.

Ronayne calls for metro government, state plan to fight sprawl

Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc., writes in Sunday's Plain Dealer that Cleveland and Cuyahoga County should merge to fight sprawl.

"Since 2002, we've consumed more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Cleveland's metropolitan area without any growth in population," writes Ronayne, who was former Mayor Jane Campbell's chief planner and chief of staff.

Like Indianapolis and Louisville, Ronayne says, our city and suburbs should merge into a larger Cleveland 0f 1.3 million people. He says it would save taxpayer money and encourage "sustainability" -- investing in our older cities instead of abandoning them. "What if Westlake's mayor became a borough president like in New York City?" he asks.

Since our urban sprawl extends beyond Cuyahoga County, Ronayne also says our region should share tax revenue, like in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. He wants Ohio to follow Maryland's lead by "requiring new exurban developments to build sewer lines, roadways and schools without state aid unless urban core communities were fully built-out."

I could easily get cynical here and say that Ronayne's proposals are radical for Ohio, that mayors won't want to give up their power, suburbanites won't want to attach themselves to the city, and nothing is likely to stop people from moving to big homes on big lots with low tax bills in Lorain County and Bainbridge and Sagamore Hills.

But metro government is the logical end point of our area's fashionable but vague talk about regionalism. It's an obvious idea to examine as we decide how far to take county government reform. Ronayne's op-ed is significant because he's Cleveland's first prominent political figure (that I can recall) to say all these ideas could work here. The question is, will any more join him?

I wonder if supporting metro government will help or hurt Ronayne's political ambitions. He has said he's interested in being mayor of Cleveland someday. See Andy Netzel's Cleveland Magazine profile, from last year, for more about him. (If you'd like to link to Netzel's story, use this shortened link: tinyurl.com/RonayneCM)

Med Mart: What next?

Now that the county has inked the deal with MMPI, what will happen next?

The county still has to buy the current convention center from the city. MMPI and the county will negotiate some more over the next year, fleshing out the deal in further agreements about finances, leases, construction and design. MMPI will start trying to sign medical manufacturers and conventions. It has a year to lease five showrooms and book ten conferences or shows. If all that happens, construction probably starts next spring. It'll take three years, though MMPI may book shows into a renovated Public Hall starting in 2011.

Questions to watch: How many manufacturers and shows will MMPI book, and what kind? How much attention will they devote to non-medical conventions? Will negotiations with the county go smoothly, or will sticking points and surprises come up? What will be the second stream of money to fund the project besides the sales tax, if any? If it's the hotel tax, what happens to Positively Cleveland?