Farewell to the voting beat

Today I'm going to purge a bunch of documents from my office. Six and a half years of writing, story-telling, document-digging, watchdogging, and pack-ratting have left me with a room full of paper: banker's boxes and accordion files bulging with old public records and notebooks, the raw materials for narratives and investigative pieces.

One box I'm purging is the elections box. After two years of making the board of elections one of my beats (an unusual beat for a magazine writer, in most times and places), I hope not to write about Cuyahoga County's voting system again.

That's because our once-sad voting agency has gotten its act together. Cleveland and Ohio shed their reputations for election buffoonery this November with a stress-free, snafu-proof Election Day. No more national horror at our lame mistakes. No more conspiracy theories convincing our friends in other states that we're at fault for an election result they didn't like.

What I saw on Election Day -- no lines at once-clogged voting locations, the elections office calling in to check on poll workers instead of leaving them stranded by busy signals -- showed how far Cuyahoga's elections office has come. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's decision to release the agency from her supervision this November was the final thumbs-up that confirmed our civic crisis over voting is over.

Credit goes to the leaders who took over our voting agency in 2007, from director Jane Platten to the four elections board members. I made some light fun of them in our September issue pieces on voting -- but I sat through a lot of meetings held by the old board and the new board, and saw old guard offer a perfect example of how a public agency should not act, while the new leaders showed how a troubled office can reform itself. And Brunner, who I was pretty tough on in September, held firm this fall against state Republicans' attempt to throw our system into a new round of chaos.

Yes, the board fought too much and spent too much money, straining the county budget. And a careful post-mortem look at the election results still shows ways voters can lose their vote through their own mistakes. But Platten has set up a system for noting problems and addressing them next time.

Ohio probably benefited from the fact that Obama won here by 4 percentage points. That's a margin too big to contest, so no one bothered to prod our weak spots. Any big city in a swing state or recount state will have its election flaws exposed. But some flaws are worse than others. Minnesota's Senate recount is exposing some mistakes, but way fewer than in Florida eight years ago. How will we hold up if we're the swing town in the swing state again? Much better, I think, with the officials and system we have now.

O'Malley wasted $1m a year

Pat O'Malley infamously used the Cuyahoga County recorder's office as a patronage machine. Now the state auditor has figured out how much taxpayer money he wasted doing that: $1 million a year.

OK, the words "waste" and "patronage" do not appear in auditor Mary Taylor's press release today. But read her report along with the "Recorded Deeds" section of my October profile of O'Malley, or the Plain Dealer's April exposé of his employees' political connections, and that's the obvious conclusion.

The report says O'Malley personally chose who to hire, what job to give them, and what to pay them. That made his employees totally dependent on him and very likely loyal.

He hired too many people and paid them too much. He larded the staff with more than eight people who simply went to meetings to talk about what the recorder does -- serious overkill for an office that records deeds, but it surely helped his name recognition at election time. In all, $1 million of his $7 million annual budget was unnecessary spending.

Total control made it easy to reward political allies with jobs and get employees to campaign for him. It also made it easy to do what Cathy Luks, former North Royalton mayor and recent Republican candidate for recorder, says he did: Attempt to bribe her with one of those public outreach jobs if she quit running against him.

Taylor's press release and report put it more politely. Highlights:

-Cuyahoga County recorder's employees have a light workload. They process 2,522 documents per employee per year, compared to 3,912 and 4,688 in Franklin and Hamilton counties.

-They're overpaid. Top aides make 48 percent more than their peers in similar counties. The average employee makes more than $43,400, compared to $36,300 among their peers.

-The office should get rid of most or all of its 8.4 public outreach employees, who attend "community libraries, meetings and other events to increase awareness of services provided by the Recorder's Office." Other large Ohio counties have either 2 outreach employees or none. Cutting seven would save $365,000.

-The recorder should cut 17 other employees, saving $700,000.

-The office has no formal hiring process, evaulating process, or job descriptions. "The previous Recorder determined the need for a position, the person selected for the position, and the salary provided to that employee. ... [The office] determines initial salaries without regard to skills required and/or minimum qualifications at the time of hire."

The audit did praise the recorder's office for performing all its required duties and using new technology to make it easier for citizens to file deeds. The new recorder, Lillian Greene, says she's already started reducing the staff. She also claims the comparisons with other counties aren't fair because the others outsource some work.

My favorite tidbits from the Plain Dealer's story this morning:

-"O'Malley could not be reached Monday for comment." Yeah, because he's in federal prison, serving a 15-month sentence for downloading obscenity.

-Yet another argument for reforming county government: "Cuyahoga's elected officials, such as the recorder, have the authority to outspend their budgets and occasionally do so."

Welcome back

Hello, readers. It's been some time since I posted, so thanks for stopping by. Cleveland's political scene slowed down a lot after the presidential election's high drama, and I got caught up in some fun assignments that had nothing to do with politics (especially Cleveland beer and Superman).

Now that we've fully recovered from our post-election news hangovers, it's time to catch up. In the spirit of New Year's, this week I'm going to look at several bits of recent political news and blog about how they either helped bring big stories from 2008 to an interesting close, or hint at how the city's biggest political questions of 2009 will play out. As the new year gets going, I'll be blogging regularly about the latest headlines. Thanks again for reading.

Activist Ed Hauser dies

Local activist Ed Hauser, who pushed doggedly to make the beautiful, underappreciated Whiskey Island a county park, and who attended countless government meetings, politely but stubbornly asking questions no one else was asking, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 47.

Cleveland loses Hauser at an awful time. He was asking important questions about two huge public projects that may each cost $500 million: the medical mart/convention center and the port relocation.

In our May issue, columnist Michael D. Roberts wrote admiringly, "Hauser is a pain — a persistent, nagging, unyielding pain. On the medical scale of one to 10, he would rate a 10. What makes him so painful is that he challenges the way the town and its dysfunctional government work."

Should Dimora resign? "I'm not there quite yet," says state Dem chair

Lots of buzz this week on political blogs about whether Chris Redfern, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman, will ask Jimmy Dimora to resign as Cuyahoga County Democratic chairman. So I called Redfern.

"That's for others to decide. I’m not there quite yet," Redfern said late today.

Barack Obama's share of the vote in Cuyahoga County was higher than John Kerry's in 2004, but not by a lot. "Among the worst performers was Cuyahoga County," Redfern told me. "At a national election of this magnitude, you would expect [better]. Obviously, the distractions Jimmy and others have been dealing with in the last few months clearly impacted this particular election."

The Plain Dealer's Mark Naymik wrote about Redfern's disappointment with Cuyahoga's results on cleveland.com Monday. "With the election over, it won't be surprising if party leaders press Dimora, who's at the center of a massive public corruption probe, to step aside soon," Naymik wrote. Bloggers picked up on that and on Redfern's comments Tuesday at a public forum in Pepper Pike about the election and Dimora. (See this post on Buckeye State Blog, including the comments at the bottom.) The bloggers thought Redfern was saying Dimora's situation would be dealt with in a few weeks.

"I was speaking about the weakness of the county party," Redfern says. "The state party will be providing county leadership and county activists intensive training in the first quarter of next year." That'll include several counties, such as Youngstown's Mahoning County, where Redfern thinks Democratic turnout should've been higher. "Those unwilling to embrace strong robust county parties [should] change or step aside. It's nothing to do specifically with Jimmy."

I asked Redfern if he thought Dimora should stay on the county commission. "That's for others to decide," he repeated. "I'm not a constituent."

Sounds like Redfern is letting Dimora dangle in the wind, but isn't yet ready to push him out.

County reform: the plan

The Commission on Cuyahoga County Government Reform issued its proposal Friday. You might have missed the news, amid all the election coverage, but the reform plan is a big deal. It'll be at the center of our debate about our county government in the new year.

Here is the final report. It's 10 pages and worth reading.

The commission proposes to eliminate the elected jobs of auditor, recorder, treasurer, engineer, coroner, and clerk of courts. It'll combine the first three into a finance department with an appointed director. It'll keep the three-person county commission, but voters would choose a commission president who would be a quasi-executive: recommending budgets, appointing the county administrator and department directors, representing the county in major negotiations. The state legislature will decide whether to put the reform proposal up for a county-wide vote next year.

This plan is clearly a compromise between those who wanted a separate county executive and county council and those who didn't (Louis Stokes) because they worried minorities wouldn't get elected as often.

But here's an important detail: The report also points out that there are two ways to change the county government's structure: 1) the legislature puts a new government structure on the ballot, or 2) county residents themselves start a movement to create a county charter. A charter would give the county government new powers under Ohio's principle of home rule.

The reform commission itself expresses hope that Cuyahoga County citizens will go farther than the commission could, and organize and create a charter. And it says if we did, then the county's new powers would justify having a separate county executive and council.

Actually, a group is already pushing for a charter: the Citizens for Cuyahoga Success, which grew out of Forest City Enterprises co-chairman Sam Miller's March 2007 speech favoring county reform. Its website, cfcsuccess.com, has only posted a volunteer sign-up sheet so far. So the best sources for info about its proposal are this article and this follow-up from Inside Business. (Inside Business is owned by the same company as Cleveland Magazine, Great Lakes Publishing. The articles' author, Lute Harmon, Sr., is chairman of the company as well as a member of Citizens for Cuyahoga Success.)

What happens if two reform proposals both go before voters next year? I don't think anyone has thought that far ahead yet -- we'll see.

Two other details from the reform commission's proposal are worth mentioning. It recommends creating a county law department, instead of having the county prosecutor serve as county legal counsel, which sometimes creates conflicts of interest. Also, it would create a human resources commission that would set uniform standards for hiring in all departments, which would cut down on patronage.

Here are some key quotes from the reform commission's report (bolds are mine):

- "From any perspective – efficiency, fairness, accountability, effectiveness – the structure of Cuyahoga County government is letting us down."

- "Eight elected administrative officials operate with virtual autonomy. In practice, they each run their own hiring operations and effectively set their own budgets. Three County Commissioners have far less budget and administrative control than good governance demands."

- "The diffusion of power also means duplication of effort, inefficiency and waste of taxpayer dollars. Nearly all of the elected administrative officers have staff who separately perform basic functions such as human resources, public outreach, information technology and financial management."

-The county also suffers from a "lack of a clearly identifiable leader."

-"Streamlining Cuyahoga County government would make it far more efficient by eliminating unnecessary elective offices and by giving leadership authority to the President of the Board of County Commissioners. ... Millions of dollars could be saved each year."

-"Our community needs the County to be a more effective leader on regional issues, especially economic issues. A Board of County Commissioners led by a 'strong President' would be a nimble and effective actor in this arena."

The reform commission also interviewed almost all the current elected county officials to get their opinions on reform. The interview notes are online here. Highlights:

-Most of the eight elected administrative officials were skeptical of the reform proposals, though some (such as Prosecutor Bill Mason) were more enthusiastic about reform than others.

-Treasurer Jim Rokakis was strongly in favor of reform. He believes it could lead to a leaner government, which he estimated could save $40 to $60 million a year. Right now, he says, the commissioners don't question what the other elected officials spend.

-County commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan (link is broken, sorry) both testified before the reform panel and supported making most of the elected positions appointed. Hagan was skeptical of a county executive and council plan. (It looks like Jimmy Dimora is the only elected county official who didn't talk to the reform panel.)

Medical Mart might not go to Tower City after all

A weird story in the Sunday Plain Dealer shows something's happening behind the scenes with the convention center and Medical Mart project. It's clearer if you read the article upside-down.

"Cleveland's Medical Mart threatened by New York project," the headline reads. The lead is direct: "A major threat to Cleveland's proposed Medical Mart is growing in New York, where developers say they are ready to start building a $1 billion World Product Centre."

The Plain Dealer is no longer buying the claims that the New York medical mart poses no threat to Cleveland. Toby Cosgrove, the Cleveland Clinic's CEO and an early supporter of the Medical Mart, is sounding an alarm about delays in the project here.

Why the delays? That's what you have to read backwards to learn. Here's my rewrite of the info in the article's 19th to 29th paragraphs:

Cleveland's proposed convention center and medical mart may not be built at Tower City after all.

Merchandise Mart Properties, the project's developer, has quietly rejected the Greater Cleveland Partnership's recommendation of Tower City as the cheaper location for the project. The developer, which has re-examined both Tower City and the site of the current convention center, now says it could build on either site for a much lower cost than the Partnership estimated.

"We think that both [Cleveland] sites are viable," said Mark Falanga, senior vice president. The company and its consultants have reduced costs at both places to about $400 million, he said.

That means the powerful Forest City Enterprises, which owns Tower City, may yet lose out on the project. MMPI hasn't even started negotiating with Forest City. And the county commissioners, who asked the chamber for its recommendation, now say they'll go along with whichever site MMPI prefers.

The county commissioners had planned to choose a site months ago. Now they say they "want to" vote on a site in January.

The public has had little chance to examine the decision-making about this project, though it will be built with $400 million in public funds. That's because the county commissioners have relied on private entities, MMPI and the Partnership, to analyze it. This September story from Scene looks into some of the big questions the public will have to ask the county and MMPI when they finally nail down a deal.