Linndale sues, holds mayors court one last time

{Updated, 3/27; see bottom of post.} 

A guy walked into Linndale’s tiny courtroom today, threw himself onto a seat, and held his head in his hands. His hair was uncombed, his stubble days-long, as if he’d almost slept through his 3:30 pm court date.

He contemplated the crumpled court papers in his hand and shook his head. He may have been one of Linndale’s last defendants ever. But if he knew that, it wasn’t consoling him.

The Linndale mayor’s court held an unusual Tuesday session today, blitzing through two weeks’ worth of scofflaws while it still could. On Friday,* a new state law makes mayor’s courts illegal in towns with less than 201 people.

Linndale, official population 179, is fighting back. The microvillage and operator of I-71’s most famous speed trap is suing to try to stop the law. A hearing on the challenge is set for tomorrow afternoon in Columbus.

Meanwhile, mayor’s court magistrate George Sadd conducted court today as he always has, with a quirky cheerfulness that reflects the ambience of Northeast Ohio’s quirkiest town.

A defendant rose, holding his year-old daughter. Dressed in pink, she hung onto her father’s shoulder and his black coat’s furry hood.

“You wanna talk?” Sadd asked her. “Wanna be his lawyer? Did he say he was guilty?”

Actually, Dad pled not guilty. He was cited for speeding while driving a ’91 Nissan. He actually drives a ’95 Ford Escort. Sadd dismissed his case.

The last few defendants sagged in their seats, wearing glum, chastened, about-to-be-fined looks.

“You should be very happy today,” Sadd told them. “This is the last day of winter!”

Tomorrow, the first day of spring, is also D-Day for Linndale.* TV news vans will likely descend on the town’s eight streets, driving a careful 25 mph, waiting to see if the new law will actually end the village’s 46-year-old speed trap.

Sadd turned to Mike Toczek, the clerk of courts and the town’s top civilian employee. “Mike, don’t let anybody rile you tomorrow,” he counseled. “Just answer questions to the best of your ability.”

Soon, Sadd saw my notebook and realized the media onslaught had already begun. While he waited for one last defendant’s lawyer to arrive, he started chatting.

“This is a good court,” Sadd told me. “I’m very good with the plea bargains here, trying to help everybody out.”

Linndale issues traffic tickets at a fantastic rate: about 2,700 annually per 100 residents, by far the highest ratio in Ohio. And the rate might even be higher than reported.

My 2011 article, “Greetings From Linndale,” co-written with Mark DeMarino, found strange discrepancies in Linndale’s official 2010 census count of 179: a block that's not really in Linndale, a block where phantom residents supposedly moved into an industrial zone, and a block that officially doubled in population but didn't have nearly that many people a year later. We also found that police went door-to-door, encouraging people to fill out census forms, a practice the Census Bureau said was inappropriate and could intimidate people.

The new law’s sponsor, Sen. Tom Patton, has argued that Linndale issues tickets disproportionately to fund the town budget. Sadd disagrees.

“What does the number of people in the village have to do with enforcement of traffic laws?” he asked. “Trained police officers issue tickets on highways. The residents sit at home and watch TV.”

Sadd heard 40 defendants’ cases today; 93 more have a court date on March 27. Will the court be open then, despite the law?

“Yes,” Sadd insisted. He invited me to come back. “We’ll have tea and doughnuts for you.”

*Update, 3/20: A judge has denied Linndale's request for a preliminary injunction, so the law is set to go into effect on Friday.

(The Ohio Supreme Court ordered Linndale and other tiny mayor's courts to cease operation as of March 20, which is 90 days after the governor signed the bill. But the law actually takes effect on the 22nd, 90 full days after it was filed with the Secretary of State.)

Update, 3/27: Linndale has won a stay of the mayor's court law pending an appeal. The tiny towns' lawyers and the state attorney general's office will face off at the appeals court this summer.  

Justice Department investigating Cleveland police

The debate over the Nov. 29 police chase and shooting got bigger today. A top civil rights lawyer for the Justice Department, with Mayor Frank Jackson at his side, announced an investigation into whether the Cleveland police have engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force.

It’s not a criminal investigation, but it could result in the federal government asking or demanding reforms in the police department. It’s not just about the November shooting, but that’s definitely part of it.

“We initiated our investigation after a careful, considered review process that spanned police activity over a number of years,” said Tom Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, at a morning press conference. U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach confirmed that the Nov. 29 shooting was part of the feds’ review.

Dettelbach said the preliminary inquiry was launched last year in response to requests from the mayor, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, the NAACP, and local clergy. Those requests all came in December. Some specifically asked the feds to investigate the Nov. 29 shooting.

The announcement reframes the debate about Cleveland police’s use of force: It’s not just about one chase on one night, but a possible pattern. Dettelbach confirmed today that his office is still investigating the police use of force against Ernest Henderson after a high-speed chase in January 2011. (For a roundup of several recent allegations of excessive force in Cleveland, including the Henderson case, see this Plain Dealer article.)

Jackson’s presence at the press conference may also get the town beyond the debate it got stuck in last month, over whether the Nov. 29 chase was a “systemic failure in the Cleveland Police Department.” Mike DeWine, the state attorney general, said it was. Police chief Michael McGrath disagreed. Jackson left the question open. (See my new profile of Jackson for more on this.)

“[If] we need to do better in areas, then we will gladly change,” Jackson said today.

But I doubt that means the chief’s head on a platter, as some critics demanded last month. Jackson said today that he, McGrath and safety director Martin Flask have worked on maintaining trust between citizens and police for “all the time that I have been mayor, this chief has been chief, [and] this director has been director.”

Jackson values loyalty, and it sounds like he still views McGrath and Flask as loyal subordinates who are willing to go as far as he wants to change the department. That means the questions rebound on Jackson too. Has he done enough to discourage excessive force? And if no, what more must he do?

The Mayor’s next challenges: Between the lines at the State of the City

Mayor Frank Jackson’s State of the City talk today felt very friendly, a polite discourse replacing a long checklist speech. But if you listened carefully -- to the questions Jackson answered and the questions he didn’t -- you could hear hints of several big challenges the mayor has to tackle this year and beyond:

Vacant homes. “Fifteen thousand abandoned houses in Cleveland. The city is tearing down 2,000 a year,” TV anchor Leon Bibb said. “Can you increase that rate?”

Great question, one of Bibb’s most pointed of the day. And more important than maybe he knew. City Hall actually tore down only 728 vacant homes last year, down from a peak of 1,708 in 2009. Homeowners and the county land bank demolish the rest.

“We cannot afford to address all of what we need to address,” Jackson replied. “In six years, we’ve spent over $50 million, and we still have this problem.”

He’s right -- the problem is too big for the city to tackle alone. That’s why local congresspeople are trying to pass a bill to use federal money to demolish homes in Cleveland and other foreclosure-torn cities. But Jackson didn’t mention their effort.

Instead, he nodded toward councilman Jeff Johnson’s argument for demolishing fewer homes and preserving more -- without endorsing it. In the end, he said, “I believe Cleveland will be in a much better position to take that abandoned property that now has become vacant land and develop some redevelopment of Cleveland’s neighborhoods.” OK, but to go from abandoned home to vacant land, you need to tear stuff down!

The waterfront. Bibb asked what the city’s doing to better develop the riverfront and lakeshore. Jackson touted the Flats East Bank project, then said his waterfront task force is drafting a request for qualifications from developers interested in building along North Coast Harbor. The city’s Twitter feed sang backup –

Mayors advisory committee is preparing to issue a Request for Qualifications for developers this spring for Lakefront Development
— City of Cleveland (@CityofCleveland) March 13, 2013

Spring? This is taking a while. In a December interview, the mayor told me he expected the task force to deliver him a draft by January.

Jackson’s playing catch-up here – he lost four years of opportunity at the waterfront on a scuttled plan to move the port. While reporting my new profile of Jackson, I heard from Clevelanders who asked why he isn’t tackling the waterfront project with some of the urgency he applied to the schools.

“Developers actually see this as an opportunity,” Jackson told Bibb, “and I believe developers will come forward.” Let’s hope so.

The port. “The port authority levy went down,” Bibb noted. “What happens now with the port?” Good question. But then Bibb stepped on it by bringing up the waterfront plan again. Jackson responded to the second question but dodged the first.

The port’s future is a fair question to ask Jackson, who appoints six of the port board’s nine members. The November levy request would’ve addressed a big wish list on the lakefront and waterfront, including a pedestrian bridge from downtown to North Coast Harbor and a plan to shore up the eroding Irishtown Bend. Jackson and Ed FitzGerald’s administrations teamed up to write the wish list, but neither campaigned for the levy beyond putting their names on mass mailings.

Now it looks like the port will return to voters this year with a modest request for a renewal levy, not an increase. Which of those projects on the wish list will it still take on? And how will they be paid for?

The police shooting. Bibb politely asked Jackson for his thoughts on the November police chase and shooting, and Jackson again said he won’t make judgments until the city’s investigation is complete. He repeated his “inside the box, outside the box” metaphor, about whether officers followed the city’s policies and procedures.

“If people are within the box, and they’ve conducted themselves appropriately, they don’t have anything to worry about. If they have not, they do have something to worry about,” Jackson said. “It depends on how far outside and how severe [their] actions were.” Fair enough. But the attorney general says 60 police officers went “outside the box” to join a high-speed chase without permission. Will the mayor punish them all?

The schools. Bibb asked the mayor how to get more parental involvement in the schools. This is a polite way of bringing up the most cynical, sweeping critique of the mayor’s school reforms, the argument that no reforms will work if parents don’t parent.

Encouraging more involvement is part of the plan, Jackson said. But he also argued that more parents will get involved if they see the schools get better. “People have to believe things are relevant to them,” he said. “As we become more successful, I believe that will lead to greater participation.” He challenged parents and others to insist on better schools and a broader effort by business to help them improve. “The community should hold the public and private sector to a much higher level of expectation than they do now.”

Later, a retired teacher held Jackson accountable, asking him how the district will attract talented teachers if they may face classes with more than 40 or 50 students. Jackson partially dodged this one. “You mentioned 50-something kids in one class,” he replied. “I could probably tell you about another with less than 20.”

But Cleveland does have outrageous class sizes. Grades 4 through 12 average 40 to 41 students per class, schools CEO Eric Gordon told me this fall. (Grades K through 3 are OK, at 20 to 23.) Getting class sizes under control was a major argument for passing the school levy. Will Jackson and Gordon get it done?

My new Frank Jackson profile, out now

It’s time to stop underestimating Frank Jackson — that’s the headline of my new profile of Cleveland’s mayor, in the March issue of Cleveland Magazine and online now.

For years, people have dismissed Jackson with clichés. He's not a cheerleader for Cleveland. He doesn't use the bully pulpit to champion causes. He's not inspirational. Not a visionary. Those clichés persist because Jackson belongs to that rarest of species, the introverted politician. We’re used to being governed by glad-handing extroverts.

But seven years into Jackson’s time as mayor, it’s time to judge him by different standards. After his unlikely political victories for school reform and the school levy, it’s time to acknowledge his successes and understand his talents. That will actually help us demand more of him.

My profile explores how Jackson used his shrewd understanding of people’s motivations to get the school reforms and levy passed. It follows him from Glenville to the Cleveland Clinic to City Hall and catches him dropping witty side comments, near-riddles and risky, blunt comments that provoke nervous laughter in audiences. It examines his surprising, up and down relationship with Gov. John Kasich. It explores how his belief in equity and fairness and his instincts for consistency and patience play out in how he governs.

The story also probes the most consistent and illuminating criticism of Jackson in political circles, that he has a small circle of trust, yet can be overly loyal to those he does trust. And it looks at how all those habits and beliefs affect how he’s handling some of his biggest challenges of 2013, including the investigation into the November police chase and shooting and his latest efforts to develop the waterfront.

Meanwhile, 40 pages away in the March issue, our columnist, Michael D. Roberts, offers a different perspective on the mayor. Less impressed with Jackson’s school victories than I am, Roberts argues that the mayor’s record is disappointing and ought to invite a strong challenger when he runs for re-election this fall. Roberts’ column in our Talking Points commentary section, “Inaction Jackson,” is online here.

I’ve often written about the mayor on this blog, but the March profile is my first magazine-length look at Jackson since he took office in 2006. If the conventional wisdom is right and Jackson coasts to a third term this November, he’ll be mayor through 2017. So now’s the time to ask, what more do we expect of him?

If you’d like to link to my profile, please use this shortcut: http://j.mp/FrankJackson.

FitzGerald the reformer, FitzGerald the loyal Democrat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)