32 Years of Roldo’s Point of View now online

You can’t tell Cleveland’s story of the last five decades without a word from Roldo Bartimole.

He’s the city’s original alternative journalist, icon-smasher, press critic and radical muckraker. Whether you think the white-haired, reedy-voiced reporter is Cleveland’s conscience or the town crank, he’s a necessary corrective to 45 years of boosterism and power-elite conventional wisdom.

“I don’t have a lot of heroes. Roldo Bartimole is one,” Esquire writer and Cleveland native Scott Raab tweeted last month, when his hero turned 80.

Now, Roldo's life's work has been liberated from library shelves. The Cleveland Memory website has recently scanned and posted the entire 32-year print run of Roldo's Cleveland politics newsletter, Point of View.

The generation of Clevelanders who know Roldo through his Cool Cleveland columns can read him as he takes on his great nemeses of the '70s, ’80s and ’90s: George Forbes and George Voinovich, The Plain Dealer and Alex Machaskee, Forest City and Dick Jacobs, sports team owners and their sweetheart deals.

My quick dig in Cleveland Memory's Roldo archive turned up gems:

• “Buying Peace the Private Way,” June 26, 1968 – Roldo breaks the news that businessmen paid black militants $40,000 in summer 1967 to help prevent a repeat of the Hough riots.

• “Resign Now,” April 26, 1980 – One of Roldo’s many screeds against George Forbes.

• “Sohio Forbes/Shoves,” April 4, 1981 – The story behind the legendary photo (above) of Forbes physically throwing Roldo out of a meeting of city councilmen at the Bond Court Hotel.

• “On to the 90s: White, Westbrook break old guard,” Nov. 25, 1989 – Roldo captures the moment when new political characters stepped up to replace Forbes and Voinovich: Mike White, Jay Westbrook, Jim Rokakis, Pat O’Malley, Mike Polensek, Jeff Johnson.

• “Saying Goodbye,” December 2000 – In Point of View’s last issue, Roldo looks back on 32 years of combat against Cleveland’s political and economic powers. 

I’ve blogged about Roldo before – here’s a post about how downtown looks through his eyes, and one about his emergence as a critic of Mayor Frank Jackson. I’ve just posted two articles about him from Cleveland Magazine’s archives:

• “Knight Errant,” May 1972 – In which Roldo describes his journalistic vows of poverty and comes close to calling himself a socialist and anarchist.
       (shortlink: j.mp/Roldo-KnightErrant)

• “Last of the Great Muckrakers,” September 2000 – Michael D. Roberts’ profile of Roldo, which explores his single-minded devotion to his work and reveals the origin of his unusual first name (“the hero of… a cheap Italian novel”).
       (shortlink: j.mp/Roldo-Muckraker)

(photo by Timothy Culek, Cleveland Press, from clevelandmemory.org)

Last thread from Nate Gray case tied up

Ah, nostalgia.  Romantics pine for lost love, sports fans recall long-ago championships, and journalists reminisce about scandal.

So I bet I'm not the only journalist in town surprised by woozy vertigo on Tuesday as old times rushed back onto the Plain Dealer's front page.

"Allega pays $500,000 to resolve complaint," the headline read.  The last legal vestige of the Nate Gray scandal is, at last, finished.

Eleven years ago, Anthony Allega Cement Contractors laid a new runway at Hopkins Airport, the biggest single construction job Cleveland City Hall ever awarded. Now, Allega is paying the Justice Department a cool half-million dollars to resolve its complaint that Allega used minority subcontractors as false fronts on the job. 

Every time I fly out of Hopkins on that western runway, I think of Nate Gray. He doesn't appear in the PD article, but he was suspected to be all over that contract.  The FBI investigated the runway job, trying to prove that Gray, former Mayor Mike White's best friend, corrupted the city's minority subcontractors program during White's administration.  The FBI also thought Gray was the mayor's bag man, but couldn't prove it. The feds never filed charges against White, and the 45 corruption charges it leveled against Gray didn't include the runway scandal and never mentioned the mayor.

I still remember the shock I felt when, reporting on the Gray case in 2005, I laid three public records side by side. One was a FBI subpoena served on East Cleveland City Hall. The second was a letter from an FBI agent to a Cleveland City Hall official, asking for the names of the minority subcontractors on Allega's runway contract. The third was a report that listed those subcontractors: RMC, Chem-Ty Environmental, and Bradley Construction. They also appeared, in sequence, on the East Cleveland subpoena. 

That's when I knew for sure that the Nate Gray case was much bigger than his bribes to East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor or his dalliances in Houston and New Orleans.  The FBI was aiming right at the White Administration's biggest projects, including its $1.4 billion airport expansion.

My interview with John Allega still ranks as one of the most tense conversations I've ever had. I remember walking into his office and making small talk about I-480's towering Valley View bridge nearby, and he replied that people often committed suicide by jumping off it.

Allega, who knew the FBI had tapped his fax machine, confirmed that Gray was in the business of connecting contractors with minority subcontractors for city work.

"It was the talk of the town," Allega told me. "People would ask, 'Did Nate Gray ever come to see you?' "

Allega said he'd taken on Chem-Ty and RMC on Gray's advice. (RMC was owned by Gray and White's buddy Ricardo Teamor.) As Allega told the story, he later learned that both companies, and Bradley Construction, were paying Gray a percentage of their contract and calling it a consulting fee.
 
Gray also made an offer to Allega. "He'd say, 'I'm friends with the mayor. Maybe I can help you out with some of your problems.' I had no problems. I told him, 'I don't need no help.'"

Allega told me Chem-Ty proved incapable of finishing its work.  City and federal investigators later decided that wasn't the half of it.  They declared that Allega's minority subcontractors had performed little work on the runway, and that Chem-Ty was merely a "pass-through," a front. Allega was banned from getting Cleveland contracts for four years.

Since then, over drinks, lunch and coffee, I've heard fellow reporters spill their impressions of Gray and White's relationship, wonder if the FBI still had a final shoe to drop (despite the five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes), theorize about the leaked affidavits that proved the FBI  targeted White, and basically reminisce about the good old days of mortal combat with an often-vicious mayor.  The standard speculation (and here I should repeat that there is no proof) centers on whether Gray could've confirmed the FBI's suspicions about White but, out of a loyalty no one can comprehend, took his secret with him to federal prison.

Today, Nate Gray is in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana, almost halfway through his 15 years. White is retired in Newcomerstown, kissing alpacas. And Allega has resolved its dispute with the feds without admitting any wrongdoing.  That is the real, quiet end to the story.
 
To follow me back to the bad old days, check out my stories "Inside the Nate Gray Case" and "Scenes and Secrets: Nate Gray on Trial."

Urban Outfitter: my profile of Ann Zoller

Ann Zoller, executive director of ParkWorks, has taken her nonprofit far beyond trees and flowers. She believes creating exciting public spaces is not just about carefree recreation — it’s a key to making Cleveland a place more people want to live. She wants to guide downtown’s landmark public spaces from the dull, gray present to a spring-like rebirth.

Zoller, more than anyone else, is responsible for this summer's rebuilding of Perk Plaza, site of a shocking 2009 murder, as a safer, more welcoming park. She’s also helping the Medical Mart developer redesign the century-old downtown malls. Even more ambitious, ParkWorks and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance want to radically remake Public Square into a destination as inspiring as the best urban parks in the country, possibly even by building a giant hill right over Superior Avenue and Ontario Street.

That’s why I profiled Zoller in “Urban Outfitter,” my feature in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine.

Zoller's political savvy helps her get things done. The former Mike White aide enjoys a solid partnership with the Jackson Administration (though that doesn't necessarily mean the mayor will fund a radically remade Public Square). And she's emerging as a key ally of influential younger politicians, such as Joe Cimperman and Chris Ronayne, who are trying to put their optimistic stamp on the city.

“For some people, a plan is the world,” says Cimperman. “They just love to plan. For Ann, the plan is just a means of getting something done.”

(To read my profile of Zoller, click here. You can link to it with this shortcut: tinyurl.com/CMZoller.)

The Rise and Fall of Jeff Johnson

Since former state Sen. Jeff Johnson is running for city council, it's a good time to add a vintage Cleveland Magazine story to our online archive. From February 1999:

The Rise and Fall of Jeff Johnson
On Feb. 5, former Ohio Senator Jeffrey Johnson will be sentenced for crimes of extortion. In the aftermath of this incredible political crash-and-burn, we examine his life’s story.

Michael Drexler's profile is the definitive account of Johnson's political accomplishments and the scandal that almost destroyed his career. It also reminds us of some fun trivia: Johnson is an ex-boyfriend of Halle Berry.

To bridge the decade since the profile, check out Ian Hoffman's piece on Johnson from our 35th anniversary issue in December 2007.

Before Johnson's felony conviction, many political observers thought he would succeed Mike White as mayor. A judge's 2007 ruling makes Johnson eligible to run for office again, and Roldo thinks Johnson still has a shot at the job someday.

Update, 4:30 p.m.: Johnson got his law license restored this morning.

(If you'd like to link to our 1999 story, here's a shortened link: tinyurl.com/jeffjohnsonCM)