WHY FIRST ENERGY FEARS REGIONALISM: From the Sunday PD, in a historical sidebar to the "Region Divided" article (page A13, not online):
1901: Tom L. Johnson is elected Cleveland mayor. In a city without suburbs, he pushes reforms that equate to early principles of regional government: home rule, public ownership of utilities, a professional approach to government and planning.
So this is all a plot to expand Cleveland Public Power to Bay Village and Solon. Now I understand...
3.29.2004
NANO, NANO: The speakers at NEOSA's "Futures Forum" last week were all pretty interesting, but the guy I wanted to corner after the show was Scott Rickert of Nanofilm, who asserts joyously that the Great Lakes Rustbelt is well on its way to becoming the NanoBelt. Nanotech, Rickert says, is all about a new generation of materials that are inevitably going to replace the metals, plastics, etc. that now surround us. The U.S. and the Great Lakes states in particular have a big lead in this technology -- says Rickert -- and there's no reason to think it can't become NE Ohio's big new manufacturing sector.
After the session Rickert elaborated: nano materials are so light that shipping from anywhere to anywhere is cheap; the only raw material needed in quantity is water; and labor is only 2-3% of production cost, so labor cost is immaterial. Hmmm, I asked, so is that because nanotech production needs very few workers? Yes, Rickert replied; very few and very well educated.
So there's a possibility to chew on -- a future NE Ohio with lots of high-tech manufacturing that pays high wages but employs almost nobody.
Chris Seper advises me not to take Rickert's image of jobless manufacturing too literally, pointing out that Nanofilm has a real workforce at its Valley View facility. So... who knows? A story worth following...
And speaking of Chris and nanotech, his blog today features this helpful Infograph on the subject from the Onion. Mmmmm, ice cream!
After the session Rickert elaborated: nano materials are so light that shipping from anywhere to anywhere is cheap; the only raw material needed in quantity is water; and labor is only 2-3% of production cost, so labor cost is immaterial. Hmmm, I asked, so is that because nanotech production needs very few workers? Yes, Rickert replied; very few and very well educated.
So there's a possibility to chew on -- a future NE Ohio with lots of high-tech manufacturing that pays high wages but employs almost nobody.
Chris Seper advises me not to take Rickert's image of jobless manufacturing too literally, pointing out that Nanofilm has a real workforce at its Valley View facility. So... who knows? A story worth following...
And speaking of Chris and nanotech, his blog today features this helpful Infograph on the subject from the Onion. Mmmmm, ice cream!
3.26.2004
PRIORITIES: The PD editorializes somberly this morning about the Cleveland School District's announced budget cuts.
There is no arguing the district's desperate financial straits. The last several months have witnessed midstream cuts in state aid, dwindling property tax revenues and fast-climbing charter-school and health-insurance costs... The district plans to address one half of this equation by seeking new taxes in November. Residents last approved a city schools levy in 1996, but back then the economy hummed, and the city hadn't laid off more than 300 safety workers. Even if school officials secure a miracle win this year, the money won't arrive in time to avert the certain downward spiral forced by this spring's cuts.
The district escaped academic emergency status just last fall, a proud moment. But it will be desperate once again when classes open this August. The near future looks ugly, and the sooner citizens accept this reality, the better chance Cleveland has of launching speedy repairs.
But for some reason the editorial fails to mention why the school levy was put off until this November instead of going on last Fall's ballot, when the coming crisis was already evident to every public official, business leader and editorial writer in town.
Children, can you say "convention center"?
There is no arguing the district's desperate financial straits. The last several months have witnessed midstream cuts in state aid, dwindling property tax revenues and fast-climbing charter-school and health-insurance costs... The district plans to address one half of this equation by seeking new taxes in November. Residents last approved a city schools levy in 1996, but back then the economy hummed, and the city hadn't laid off more than 300 safety workers. Even if school officials secure a miracle win this year, the money won't arrive in time to avert the certain downward spiral forced by this spring's cuts.
The district escaped academic emergency status just last fall, a proud moment. But it will be desperate once again when classes open this August. The near future looks ugly, and the sooner citizens accept this reality, the better chance Cleveland has of launching speedy repairs.
But for some reason the editorial fails to mention why the school levy was put off until this November instead of going on last Fall's ballot, when the coming crisis was already evident to every public official, business leader and editorial writer in town.
Children, can you say "convention center"?
3.25.2004
FREE CULTURE FOR FREE: The entire text of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture, is available for free download here.
3.24.2004
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE... The Plain Dealer reports this morning that everything you suspected about your official "consumer advocate" in Columbus is true:
Former Ohio Consumers' Counsel Rob Tongren "deliberately concealed from the public" a consultant's findings that might have slashed electric bills in FirstEnergy territory, a state investigation has found.
Tongren's senior staff members, meanwhile, appeared to have urged the consultant - Boston-based LaCapra Associates - in a series of e-mails "to destroy their own records of the report and the underlying work product," says the report, which was released Tuesday.
It also says Tongren, who has since resigned from his job representing utility customers, accepted meals, refreshments and golf outings from utilities 71 times between 1999 and 2003. He failed to properly report more than $1,000 in gifts.
Tongren also was reported to have paid his own way, or gotten in free, to dozens of events at which utility executives and lobbyists were present, including an excursion to the Fiesta Bowl in 2003 on Columbia Gas' jet.
Tongren's replacement, Janine Migden, has taken some flak for her stint as an Enron lobbyist. But among the people who applied, she was probably a pretty good pick. She started her law career as a paralegal at the OCC back in the '80s, when Bill Spratley, the original Consumers' Counsel, was still making an effort to act like a genuine consumer advocate. And as lawyer for Hahn Loeser in recent years, she's been something of a green power activist, serving on the board of Green Energy Ohio among other things.
Frankly, anything's got to be better than Tongren. For a little update on what lies in store for Migden -- and northeast Ohio utility consumers -- see Ohio Citizen Action's clips today.
Former Ohio Consumers' Counsel Rob Tongren "deliberately concealed from the public" a consultant's findings that might have slashed electric bills in FirstEnergy territory, a state investigation has found.
Tongren's senior staff members, meanwhile, appeared to have urged the consultant - Boston-based LaCapra Associates - in a series of e-mails "to destroy their own records of the report and the underlying work product," says the report, which was released Tuesday.
It also says Tongren, who has since resigned from his job representing utility customers, accepted meals, refreshments and golf outings from utilities 71 times between 1999 and 2003. He failed to properly report more than $1,000 in gifts.
Tongren also was reported to have paid his own way, or gotten in free, to dozens of events at which utility executives and lobbyists were present, including an excursion to the Fiesta Bowl in 2003 on Columbia Gas' jet.
Tongren's replacement, Janine Migden, has taken some flak for her stint as an Enron lobbyist. But among the people who applied, she was probably a pretty good pick. She started her law career as a paralegal at the OCC back in the '80s, when Bill Spratley, the original Consumers' Counsel, was still making an effort to act like a genuine consumer advocate. And as lawyer for Hahn Loeser in recent years, she's been something of a green power activist, serving on the board of Green Energy Ohio among other things.
Frankly, anything's got to be better than Tongren. For a little update on what lies in store for Migden -- and northeast Ohio utility consumers -- see Ohio Citizen Action's clips today.
3.21.2004
CMSD GRADUATION RATE STILL UNDER 40%: BFD posts a quote from teacher Mary Beth Matthews:
We cannot attract businesses to the region without a trained workforce. The regions largest school district is hemorrhaging students. Cleveland's student population numbers over 70,000. The district's graduation rate is only 38%. Realize, that means 62% of those 70,000 will not receive a high school diploma. That is HUGE. The implications are staggering.
Those who discuss revitalizing the region, without considering Cleveland's education crisis are like physicians trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the cause.
Amen. And to underline Matthews' point, the new "State report card" for the district is out with the 2002-2003 graduation rate -- 39.4%. That makes the sixth straight year Cleveland's grad rate has been under 40% of entering ninth graders. Here are the last eight years:
Barbara Byrd-Bennett is fond of saying, most recently in her November speech to the City Club, that the graduation rate is up ten percentage points since she arrived. As you can see, the "report card" numbers don't support this claim.
Neither ODOE nor CMSD makes the data underlying the "official" grad rates available, so we don't know what these percentages really mean -- and it may be true that the district's data problems help to make it look worse than other "urban districts" in Ohio. But that doesn't change the reality that thousands of Cleveland high school kids continue to leave without a diploma, and that the situation is just about as bad now as it was in the state takeover period, before Byrd-Bennett took the reins.
Every year this continues means at least a couple of thousand new entrants in the city's work force without diplomas. When the last census was taken in 1999, Cleveland's percentage of adults without diplomas (31%) was the sixth highest among the fifty largest U.S. cities. And ominously, the 1999 count found that a full 38% of Cleveland's youngest adults -- 18-to-24-year-olds -- had neither diplomas nor GED certificates.
We cannot attract businesses to the region without a trained workforce. The regions largest school district is hemorrhaging students. Cleveland's student population numbers over 70,000. The district's graduation rate is only 38%. Realize, that means 62% of those 70,000 will not receive a high school diploma. That is HUGE. The implications are staggering.
Those who discuss revitalizing the region, without considering Cleveland's education crisis are like physicians trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the cause.
Amen. And to underline Matthews' point, the new "State report card" for the district is out with the 2002-2003 graduation rate -- 39.4%. That makes the sixth straight year Cleveland's grad rate has been under 40% of entering ninth graders. Here are the last eight years:
Barbara Byrd-Bennett is fond of saying, most recently in her November speech to the City Club, that the graduation rate is up ten percentage points since she arrived. As you can see, the "report card" numbers don't support this claim.
Neither ODOE nor CMSD makes the data underlying the "official" grad rates available, so we don't know what these percentages really mean -- and it may be true that the district's data problems help to make it look worse than other "urban districts" in Ohio. But that doesn't change the reality that thousands of Cleveland high school kids continue to leave without a diploma, and that the situation is just about as bad now as it was in the state takeover period, before Byrd-Bennett took the reins.
Every year this continues means at least a couple of thousand new entrants in the city's work force without diplomas. When the last census was taken in 1999, Cleveland's percentage of adults without diplomas (31%) was the sixth highest among the fifty largest U.S. cities. And ominously, the 1999 count found that a full 38% of Cleveland's youngest adults -- 18-to-24-year-olds -- had neither diplomas nor GED certificates.
3.19.2004
HEY, I'M AN URBLOG: I know about Otis White's Civic Strategies site mainly because BFD keeps bringing it up. This morning, however, having finally gotten my blogroll to function, I went googling for any links to Cleveland Diary that I should reciprocate. And up pops this on Mr. White's site...
Urban blogs are those that are focused on a metro area, provide interesting commentary about local politics, culture or urban life and aren't so ideological that they're painful to read. So how much ideology is too much? Hey, it's our list, so we get to decide...
Here's our list of urblogs worth spending time with:
Bill Callahan's blog is a jewel. He writes frequently and well, not only about Cleveland politics but economics. And he does so with an independent point of view. You can find Callahan's blog at... [you're already here].
Well. I guess George is right -- Otis is the man. How often do you get not just a nice review, but number one billing in a whole new cultural category? (Okay, "urblog" is more of a sub-sub-sub-sub-category, but even so...)
Hey Mom, I'm an urblog!
The other links on the page, from various cities, are interesting and nice company to be seen in. And note that White's looking for nominations for more urblogs to list.
Go ahead, feel free, I don't mind. My place in urblog history is secure.
Urban blogs are those that are focused on a metro area, provide interesting commentary about local politics, culture or urban life and aren't so ideological that they're painful to read. So how much ideology is too much? Hey, it's our list, so we get to decide...
Here's our list of urblogs worth spending time with:
Bill Callahan's blog is a jewel. He writes frequently and well, not only about Cleveland politics but economics. And he does so with an independent point of view. You can find Callahan's blog at... [you're already here].
Well. I guess George is right -- Otis is the man. How often do you get not just a nice review, but number one billing in a whole new cultural category? (Okay, "urblog" is more of a sub-sub-sub-sub-category, but even so...)
Hey Mom, I'm an urblog!
The other links on the page, from various cities, are interesting and nice company to be seen in. And note that White's looking for nominations for more urblogs to list.
Go ahead, feel free, I don't mind. My place in urblog history is secure.
3.18.2004
WHERE WE WORK: This week's Crain's has a new list of the "Largest Cuyahoga County employers" (there's a link to it on the web site but it doesn't work). Here are the top twenty in order of workforce size:
1 Cleveland Clinic
2 University Hospitals (including their partnership with the Sisters of Charity)
3 Cleveland Municipal School District
4 U.S. Office of Personnel Management
5 Cuyahoga County
6 City of Cleveland
7 Progressive Corporation
8 KeyCorp
9 National City Corporation
10 U.S. Postal Service
11 MetroHealth
12 Ford
13 CWRU
14 Tops Markets
15 Giant Eagle
16 Continental Airlines
17 State of Ohio
18 General Motors
19 RTA
20 Sherwin-Williams
These twenty employers currently account for 152,000 employees, which is almost one-fourth of the county's total employment (613,000 in January according to OBES). They include all county payrolls with more than 2,500 workers.
Only three of the top ten, and nine of the top twenty, are private for-profit companies. Five of the top ten are government entities (counting the USPS). Numbers 1 and 2 are nonprofit health care systems.
Of the 152,000 people working for the county's twenty biggest employers, only 42,000 -- less than a third -- work in the "private sector".
1 Cleveland Clinic
2 University Hospitals (including their partnership with the Sisters of Charity)
3 Cleveland Municipal School District
4 U.S. Office of Personnel Management
5 Cuyahoga County
6 City of Cleveland
7 Progressive Corporation
8 KeyCorp
9 National City Corporation
10 U.S. Postal Service
11 MetroHealth
12 Ford
13 CWRU
14 Tops Markets
15 Giant Eagle
16 Continental Airlines
17 State of Ohio
18 General Motors
19 RTA
20 Sherwin-Williams
These twenty employers currently account for 152,000 employees, which is almost one-fourth of the county's total employment (613,000 in January according to OBES). They include all county payrolls with more than 2,500 workers.
Only three of the top ten, and nine of the top twenty, are private for-profit companies. Five of the top ten are government entities (counting the USPS). Numbers 1 and 2 are nonprofit health care systems.
Of the 152,000 people working for the county's twenty biggest employers, only 42,000 -- less than a third -- work in the "private sector".
3.16.2004
DO-IT-YOURSELF COMMUNITY ENERGY POLICY: Don Iannone's ED Futures today points us to the Rocky Mountain Institute's Community Energy Opportunity Finder. Don says:
The Community Energy Opportunity Finder is an interactive tool that will help you determine your community's best bets for energy solutions that benefit the local economy, the community, and the environment.
Developed by energy experts at Rocky Mountain Institute, the Community Energy Opportunity Finder mimics the preliminary analysis of an expert consultant in order to help your community realize the benefits of wise energy use. The Finder was released in February 2004.
The Finder helps you collect information on your community's energy use, and then demonstrates the potential energy savings; dollar savings; reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide emissions; and job creation from energy efficiency programs. The Finder also gives you an overview of the kinds of renewable energy sources that could power your community.
The Community Energy Opportunity Finder is an interactive tool that will help you determine your community's best bets for energy solutions that benefit the local economy, the community, and the environment.
Developed by energy experts at Rocky Mountain Institute, the Community Energy Opportunity Finder mimics the preliminary analysis of an expert consultant in order to help your community realize the benefits of wise energy use. The Finder was released in February 2004.
The Finder helps you collect information on your community's energy use, and then demonstrates the potential energy savings; dollar savings; reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide emissions; and job creation from energy efficiency programs. The Finder also gives you an overview of the kinds of renewable energy sources that could power your community.
GEEK VS. NERD -- ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS: Chris Seper blogged yesterday from a business journalism conference where he learned the distinction between "geeks" and "nerds", to wit:
Nerds use knowledge to make money.
Geeks revel in the knowledge without doing anything with it.
Quite a range of possibilities, isn't it? I wonder where Berners-Lee fits in that model.
Nerds use knowledge to make money.
Geeks revel in the knowledge without doing anything with it.
Quite a range of possibilities, isn't it? I wonder where Berners-Lee fits in that model.
3.15.2004
LAKE FERRY -- WHILE CLEVELAND STUDIES, ROCHESTER SAILS: Daily high-speed ferry service between Rochester and Toronto starts April 30.
From the operator's press release on Canada News Wire:
Canadian American Transportation Systems is establishing a Fast Ferry service between Rochester, NY and Toronto, Ontario. The service will be "high speed", operating at over 50+ MPH, accommodating approximately 750 walk-on passengers, up to 220 cars and up to 10 trucks and buses. More than just a method of transportation, the Fast Ferry is truly a unique travel experience, offering amenities and ambience worthy of a mini cruise ship. Importantly, the two and a quarter hour "port to port" trip will act as a "virtual" bridge, connecting the national highway systems of Canada and the United States, and acting as a catalyst for two regions coming together, economic development, tourism activity and job growth on both sides of the border.
The Port of Cleveland has been studying the possibility of a ferry to Port Stanley since 1999. A draft of the latest million-dollar study is expected in April.
From the operator's press release on Canada News Wire:
Canadian American Transportation Systems is establishing a Fast Ferry service between Rochester, NY and Toronto, Ontario. The service will be "high speed", operating at over 50+ MPH, accommodating approximately 750 walk-on passengers, up to 220 cars and up to 10 trucks and buses. More than just a method of transportation, the Fast Ferry is truly a unique travel experience, offering amenities and ambience worthy of a mini cruise ship. Importantly, the two and a quarter hour "port to port" trip will act as a "virtual" bridge, connecting the national highway systems of Canada and the United States, and acting as a catalyst for two regions coming together, economic development, tourism activity and job growth on both sides of the border.
The Port of Cleveland has been studying the possibility of a ferry to Port Stanley since 1999. A draft of the latest million-dollar study is expected in April.
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