THE PORT OF OHIO: Why worry about regionalism? department:

I took an hour off and went to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority board meeting yesterday. The idea was to learn more about the Ontario ferry project, which I did and will report about later. But I also learned that the Port's economic development bond financing has taken some interesting turns.

The board approved two financing packages yesterday. One was for a manufacturer in Eastlake, which, you may recall, is in Lake County. The other was for a shopping center project in Parma Heights, in which there's another partner -- the Port of Toledo.

It seems that the Ports of Cleveland and Toledo have an understanding that they can call each other in to help sweeten deals. This was Toledo's second investment in Cuyahoga County. Cleveland hasn't put up any bucks for Lucas County yet... but a couple of years ago, both Ports went in together with the State to help finance a food processing plant in Chillicothe.

And you think we have no public officials with regional vision!

This was all explained to the board yesterday by Cleveland Port Director Gary Failor, who just coincidentally used to have the same job in Toledo, where he developed the whole port-bonds-for-other-development-projects thing. Interestingly, some board members seemed to have no idea this has been going on.