Council president Kelley defends Browns deal, supports sin tax

Kevin Kelley got grilled about Browns stadium funding on Tuesday. Cleveland’s new city council president sat in a circle at Speakeasy, the bar below Bier Markt on West 25th, and took questions at the end of a Civic Commons event. Five straight people asked him about the council’s November vote to pay $30 million for stadium repairs and upgrades over the next 15 years.

Kelley said the Browns’ lease binds the city to make the repairs. But he found the agreement between the cash-strapped landlord and billionaire tenant a tough sell.

“Are we always going to own Browns Stadium?” one woman asked. “Is there a plan ever to have the Browns buy Browns Stadium?”

“The city owns the stadium, and we probably always will,” Kelley said. “We owned the one before it.” That’s common in most cities, he said.

Kelley said he voted for the agreement because the city’s lawyers and a study by the engineering firm URS pegged the city’s lease obligations at about $30 million. “I wasn’t going to authorize a nickel that wasn’t contemplated in the lease,” he said. The Browns wanted the city to do more, “and the city pushed back quite a bit.”

Three weeks into the 45-year-old Old Brooklyn councilman’s job as president, stadium funding is the big question he’s got to face. Yesterday, Kelley urged the Cuyahoga County Council to put the “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes on the May 6 ballot and encouraged county residents to vote for it.

“We as a community made a decision through the ballot box that we wanted to build these sports facilities,” Kelley told me today. FirstEnergy Stadium, Progressive Field and Quicken Loans Arena are all publicly owned, part of the deals struck in the 1990s to bring the new Browns to town and make the Indians and Cavaliers happy long-term tenants.

“We own these,” Kelley told me. “We have to make these repairs. It’s either going to come out of the sin tax or it’s going to come out of the general fund, which pays police officers, firefighters, which pays EMS, which pays for recreation centers. It maintains the parks our kids play at. It plows our streets.

“It’s not a giveaway of public funds to rich owners,” he insisted. “It’s meeting the obligation that we as a community made many years ago -- because the city and the county have to make these repairs. We have leases, we have obligations. It’s either a penny a beer, 4½ cents on a pack of cigarettes, or it’s going to come out of the general fund.”

The Browns’ stadium lease, approved in 1996, looks different to many Clevelanders in 2014. Back then, Cleveland, wounded over the Browns’ forcible removal to Baltimore, was determined to get an NFL team back.

Now, the bills are mounting. City Hall is tapping its general fund for $2 million a year to fix and improve the football stadium. It still owes $11 million a year on the stadium’s construction debt. Up to now, the sin tax has covered those debt payments, but it expires this year.

To my surprise, Kelley told me the county council hasn’t decided if a sin tax renewal would cover all of the football stadium debt. The council still has to agree on how much of the hoped-for tax money would go to FirstEnergy Stadium and how much to the Q and Progressive Field. That may or may not happen before the tax renewal goes on the ballot.

At Speakeasy on Tuesday, one voter suggested the city needs to demand better lease terms from the Browns. “Many people say that deal was made somewhat under duress, there was a desperation for some kind of team,” he told, “so it wouldn’t be out of line to renegotiate in some fashion by being really aggressive.”

I asked Kelley about that. “You would need both sides come to the table to open it up,” he replied. “I don’t know that that discussion has been had yet.” He suggested the city would find itself in a tough bargaining position. “It’s difficult to open negotiations in the middle of a lease,” he said. “Now that we’re in this lease, it’s very challenging to say, ‘We’ve changed our minds.’”

Arnold Pinkney (1931-2014), veteran Cleveland political organizer and strategist

Arnold Pinkney during his 1971 run for mayor.  (clevelandmemory.org)

Arnold Pinkney ran for mayor twice, but that's not why most people in Democratic Party circles remember him. Nor is it the main reason they're mourning today's news of his death at 83.

Pinkney lost in his attempt to succeed Mayor Carl Stokes in 1971, and in his second run in 1975. His political talents lay instead in getting other people elected.  He ran successful campaigns for all three black mayors of Cleveland -- Stokes, Mike White, and Frank Jackson -- and Louis Stokes' successful run to become Ohio's first black congressman.  

He worked on national presidential campaigns too. He was the No. 2 guy on Hubert Humphrey's 1972 campaign and Jesse Jackson's run in 1984. He also served for years on Cleveland's school board. But Pinkney was best known locally as the go-to guy for get-out-the-vote efforts in black neighborhoods on Cleveland's East Side.

In 2001, I spent a day watching Pinkney and his machine work on behalf of mayoral candidate Raymond Pierce.  I rode with him in his car as he visited his ragged army of polling station canvassers, employed for a single 13-hour shift.  At one stop, he got out, shook hands, and asked people to choose Pierce in that day's primary race.  Most of the voters recognized him. "How come you're not running?" one asked, 26 years after Pinkney's second try.

His job that day was a challenge: mobilize political support for Pierce, a former Clinton Administration lawyer and political unknown. On a floor of his Pinkney-Perry insurance agency, converted into a war room, volunteers fired off phone blitzes based on mid-day precinct vote counts and a floppy-hatted professor's projections. He deployed 400 people across "each side of town, northeast and southeast," as he put it.

His effort lifted Pierce into the runoff election (where he lost to Jane Campbell). That night at the victory party, the crowd cheered for Pierce, then chanted "Arnold! Arnold!" I remember Pinkney's offhand confidence, even cockiness, as he talked to one side of the stage.  I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it was something like this: I don't know why people are so surprised. We've been doing this for 30 years. 

Jeff Johnson wants to be mayor; Nina Turner says, 'Never say never'

“If somebody asks me, ‘Would you like to be mayor of Cleveland?’ I tell them, ‘Yes, I would,’ ” city councilman Jeff Johnson says in my new profile of him. “The best thing I can do is do a good job in Ward 10 [and] be rewarded with serious consideration.”

Johnson has pulled off the biggest comeback in Cleveland politics since Dennis Kucinich went to Congress. In 1999, an extortion conviction seemed to end his career. But he’s worked his way back to city council and won reelection in November, defying gerrymandered ward lines that threatened to do him in.

In the January issue of Cleveland Magazine, Johnson, 55, talks with me about his past, his future, and how city council and the East Side are different now than in the ‘80s. You can read my profile of Johnson here.

Cleveland isn’t looking for a new mayor, of course. Frank Jackson was sworn in for a third term yesterday. But Jackson, 67, told me last year, “I would have retired but for the school effort.” Few expect him to run for a fourth term in 2017. So who are the younger politicians who could step into leadership?

Elsewhere in the January issue, I ask state senator Nina Turner if she, too, would like to be mayor someday. “Never say never!” she says. “I love the city of Cleveland. I’m a daughter of the city.” Any 2017 ambitions are far away for her; she’s already running for Ohio secretary of state this year against Jon Husted. But if she loses that race, Turner, 46, could be free to take a shot at succeeding Jackson. And my guess is she’d be more likely than Johnson to get Jackson’s endorsement.

Turner’s one of our Most Interesting People for 2014. In this issue, I also talk with her about her family, the history classes she teaches at Cuyahoga Community College, and her co-sponsorship of Jackson’s plan to reform the Cleveland schools. You can read my piece about her here.

Scowling Sweeney strikes again

Like a glowering gnome, his eyes smoldering with hate for his enemies, Martin Sweeney lurks on the Plain Dealer's front page today. The paper looks gleeful at a chance to kick the hapless ex-city council president one last time.

Sweeney has ended his presidency with a final indulgence, and the file photo makes him look furious to be caught out.

Totally unsurprisingly, Sweeney retired for a few days to collect his pension -- the same cheesy double-dip he allowed Ken Johnson to pull last year. Then he rejoins council on Monday for another four years.

There ought to be a law against elected officials' week-long fake retirements, but there isn't. Double-dipping drains government pension systems of cash and credibility (take a look at Detroit to see how that ends). Yet Cleveland councilpeople have just made double-dipping even more a part of their insular culture, restoring double-dippers' ceremonial seniority honors. They meant to come back, council explains. Everyone knows their retirements are fake.

I still can't figure out how Sweeney lasted eight years as council president. He survived a sexual harassment allegation. He dodged multiple ethical questions arising from his friendships with Cuyahoga County corruption scandal figures. He never turned over those receipts for the work that Michael Forlani's company did on his house. He never explained the relationship between Forlani's fundraising for his council leadership fund and the contractor's wiretapped boast that he could count on 14 votes from the council majority.

Last year, Sweeney's ruthless gerrymandering backfired. His old majority too slim for comfort after the November election, he delivered a score-settling farewell and handed off the presidency.

"Let's move on," says Kevin J. Kelley, the council president-elect, "and deal with the vacant housing problem [and] the gun violence epidemic." Sounds good.

Update, 3 pm: Speaking of Kelley, he scolded council members at a retreat today to show up for meetings and pay attention. But many councilpeople weren't there to hear it -- they skipped the optional meeting. Cleveland.com says only 9 of the 17 council members came, though Joe Cimperman is also tweeting from it, so let's say 10.

Kelley said committee chairpersons and vice-chairs often ignore the mayor's cabinet members when they testify. “One of my personal pet peeves is when the chair is off talking to someone else or checking email, while the director is addressing the group and looking around for someone to make eye contact with,” he said.  No kidding!

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?

Mayor Jackson's bizarre victory speech

Frank Jackson likes to talk in riddles. Tuesday night, amid his cheering victory crowd at Sterle’s Country House, the mayor promised to explain exactly “what it means to be mayor and why I ran.”

Then he told a bizarre story about a nightmare. No press accounts from Tuesday night’s party at Cleveland’s best Slovenian bar have quite captured the surreal moment.

Jackson told a story about the late councilwoman Fannie Lewis, the mercurial ruler of Hough, an eccentric, elliptical speaker. Once, the mayor said, Lewis, stressed out from her job, fell ill and went into the hospital. The staff wouldn’t let her take constituent calls until her blood pressure dropped. Eventually freed, she ran into Jackson at City Hall.

“Frank, I had a vision,” Lewis told Jackson. Then, the mayor continued in a sort of trippy litany.

“She told me her vision was, there was this huge slab of concrete,” the mayor said. “A huge slab of concrete of enormous weight. A huge slab of concrete. And she heard crying, moaning and wailing from beneath the slab of concrete.” Jackson picked up a bit of a Baptist minister’s cadence, something I’ve never heard from him before.

“And it came to her that the crying and moaning and wailing from beneath this huge slab of concrete of enormous weight was that of the people,” the mayor said. “And that they were crying and moaning and wailing because they had to bear the burden of this huge slab of concrete of enormous weight.”

This was the strangest story I’ve ever heard Jackson tell. But his supporters seemed to follow it. They cheered for the payoff.

“And she said to me, it is our duty and responsibility as public officials never to add to that burden but to relieve that burden in what we do. And then if we add a feather, then we have added to the burden of the people.”

Jackson never named the burden. He just let the nightmare vision hang there.

But when the councilwoman from Hough talks to the mayor from Central, maybe the metaphor doesn’t need translating. The burden is poverty, and maybe economic exploitation, racism, predatory crime – all the burdens of living in a poor city.

“In all of what I do, you can measure it by whether or not I am relieving or adding to that burden,” Jackson said.

Will he relieve the burden?

Critics will happily judge him on that. A huge new schools tax weighs a lot more than a feather. Failing schools weigh more.

Will Jackson’s reforms really improve education? Will the community benefit agreements he’s championed really get Clevelanders more local construction jobs?

Jackson said he wants to “institutionalize a way of life that will relieve the burden.” He means, he wants to set precedents future mayors will follow. He wants City Hall to always help the Clevelanders who struggle most.

But to leave a permanent mark, you need results, not good intentions. On schools, jobs and the city's other big issues, Jackson's legacy is still unwritten, still at stake. So, fair question: Will he relieve the burden?

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.)