ROKAKIS NOT RUNNING FOR MAYOR: I just listened to Jim Rokakis on WCPN's "90.3 at 9", with Zack Schiller of Policy Matters, talking about the hospital "payment in lieu of taxes" issue.

Asked about his possible candidacy for mayor, Rokakis said he's decided not to run.

HOSPITALS, TAXES AND POLITICS: Cuyahoga County Treasurer and Cleveland mayoral candidate (note: not any more) Jim Rokakis has an enviable knack for showing up in the media to talk about public policy ideas, rather than scandals or fights with other officeholders. But that doesn't mean he always avoids controversy.

A few months back some fur flew in the suburbs when Rokakis called for the consolidation of a few municipal library systems. (Ain't it amazing how parochial and un-regional those upper-income communities can be when it comes to their own civic institutions?) And yesterday he was in the PD raising an even more dangerous issue: The property taxes not paid by the county's two biggest employers, Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals.

Rokakis' call for "payments in lieu of taxes" from these two institutions is backed up by two short studies he commissioned from Policy Matters, released December 17. If you care at all about local finances you should read them both, but here's the "money quote" from the second report, page 2:

Both in the city and the county, the two nonprofit hospital systems, the Cleveland Clinic Health System and University Hospitals Health System, are the major owners of charitable-owned property. County-wide, they together account for at least $1.3 billion in such tax-exempt property, according to records supplied by the Cuyahoga County auditor and treasurer. This represents close to two-thirds of the tax-exempt charity holdings and 1.4 percent of all the real property, taxable and exempt, in Cuyahoga County. If these institutions paid taxes on all of their exempt real property in the county as it is now valued, local school districts and governments would receive more than $34 million a year in additional taxes.

As the reports make clear, the tax-exempt status of most Clinic and UH medical facilities is based on their ostensible "charitable" purpose, and both systems are seeking exemption on this basis for even more of their properties (like some previously taxable suburban medical offices). So it's worth noting that the guys running these "charities", Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove and UH CEO Tom Zenty, are each paid over a million dollars a year. (Cosgrove's package is more than $1.6 million.) And the Clinic, in particular, has taken heat from many directions for the small proportion of its resources devoted to charitable care -- including a national class action lawsuit filed in July.

In light of the City's permanent service cuts, the School District's ongoing financial emergency, Metrohealth's pleas for more county money for uninsured care -- and the fact that large numbers of Cleveland voters are among the poor and uninsured themselves, with no love for big rich hospital systems -- Rokakis has picked a pretty interesting issue to launch his mayoral campaign.

PRESS SILENCE ON SUNOCO ENDS: After three months of silence, the Toledo Blade finally had an article yesterday on Ohio Citizen Action's fight to protect East Toledo residents' health surveys from a Sunoco subpoena.

If you wrote the Blade a letter, thank you!

CHECK THESE OUT...

Hotel Bruce has two excellent articles on Ohio City/Near West neighborhood development -- "Who can afford Ohio City?" by Marc Lefkowitz, and Lee Chilcote's look back at thirty years of organizing and development efforts that started in the Lorain Avenue Savings and Loan building at Lorain and Fulton. There's plenty to argue about in both pieces, but together they shed considerable light on the real, difficult issues of neighborhood work.

And Brewed Fresh Daily catches an enlightening piece from SmartMobs.com about tech-empowered strikers at a factory in China that supplies WalMart.

"DO-IT-YOURSELF ANTI-MUNICIPAL BROADBAND KIT": Esme Vos at MuniWireless has the goods on a piece of "model legislation" now being circulated by a Washington think tank with honchos from BellSouth and Verizon on its board.

A couple of days ago, MuniWireless also flagged Ohio House Bill 591, introduced in the General Assembly's waning days by Representative Thom Collier (GOP-Mount Vernon). It's not the same thing as Pennsylvania's House Bill 30 (as Harold Feld of Media Access Project explains at Wetmachine), and it was introduced too late to go anywhere in the session that just ended, but... it's one more reason to expect a serious legislative attack on city-sponsored broadband when the new session begins in January.

(Incidentally, for the last two years Rep. Collier has served as chairman of the House Economic Development and Technology Committee.)

And here, again from MuniWireless, is why this all matters to non-geeks in Cleveland: "Wireless broadband: Anti-poverty weapon".

CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Sunoco attorney in Toledo demands that Ohio Citizen Action members pay his legal fees.

"Sunoco's Toledo attorney filed papers with a Toledo court on December 14, demanding that Ohio Citizen Action members pay his legal fees. Louis Tosi had previously subpoenaed Citizen Action demanding that the organization turn over to him all health questionnaires, including personal medical information, about Sunoco neighbors, with their names and addresses."

MR. TOSI, CALL YOUR OFFICE: DOUBLE STANDARD AT SHUMAKER, LOOP

While Sunoco attorney Louis Tosi has been trying to force Citizen Action to turn over confidential health interviews from neighbors of Sunoco's Toledo-area refinery, other lawyers at his own firm -- Shumaker, Loop and Kendrick -- recently convinced the Ohio Supreme Court to protect the "source confidentiality" of a Toledo radio news director who fed a sex rumor about a Toledo Blade reporter to the station's morning talk show host... who was then sued by the reporter for repeating it on the air.

As the Shumaker, Loop website proudly reports:

TOM PLETZ of the Toledo office spoke at the Toledo Bar Association "Media Law Seminar" November 8, 2004 on the subject of the Ohio "reporter's shield" law, which protects news reporters from being required to disclose the identitiy of their news sources in court.

Tom and NEEMA BELL (Toledo) obtained a ruling from the Supreme Court of Ohio November 1, 2004, which protected a Clear Channel Broadcasting radio station news director from disclosing the identity of a news source who had provided a tip. The Supreme Court merit decision without opinion effectively extinguished an earlier adverse Sixth District Court of Appeals' opinion which had construed the statute quite narrowly, and which would have required the Clear Channel news reporter to name her source.

The case (Svoboda v Clear Channel Communications, Inc.) was summarized here last March, when the Sixth District Court of Appeals upheld a Lucas County Common Pleas Court order telling WVKS news director Tricia Tischler to reveal the name of her source for the rumor about Blade reporter Sandra Svoboda ... essentially because it wasn't actually "news". That's the decision that Shumaker, Loop lawyers just got overturned.

More of the gory details of the lawsuit can be found here.

So to sum up, here's the position of Mr. Tosi's law firm:

1) The right of a radio news director and talk show host to protect the source of a scurrilous sexual rumor about a rival reporter is absolute, and must be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court; but

2) The right of citizens who provide private medical information to a civic organization's health survey to have that information held in confidence is a "frivolous" claim, and the organization's efforts to defend that claim should be punished, financially and criminally.

You gotta have principles.

JUDGE SAYS CONSUMER GROUP MUST TURN OVER CONFIDENTIAL HEALTH SURVEYS FROM TOLEDO REFINERY NEIGHBORS TO SUNOCO; MEDIA IS SILENT

You know how, when reporters are told by prosecutors and judges that they have to name their sources or go to jail, it's immediately a national news story? Even when the reporter is protecting a criminal -- like say, a source who leaked classified information to damage a political opponent?

Hold that thought while I tell you a story.

Since August, Ohio Citizen Action, a nonprofit consumer and environmental action group, has been fighting a subpoena in Lucas County (Toledo) Common Pleas Court. The subpoena demands that OCA turn over (among other things) copies of personal health surveys, filled out by 473 neighbors of Sunoco's MidAmerica refinery, to attorneys for Sunoco. OCA has been ordered by Judge Ruth Ann Franks to comply. OCA says the information was collected in confidence and they can't turn it over unless individual respondents give their permission. If they don't, OCA staff and leaders face contempt of court charges and possible jail time.

Haven't heard about this? There's a reason for that. The media is ignoring the story.

The surveys were collected in August from residents of the low-income East Toledo neighborhood near the Oregon, Ohio refinery as part of an ongoing OCA "Good Neighbor Campaign" to reduce the facility's toxic emissions. They contain respondents' names, addresses, and personal health information. The compiled results were released to the media and sent to the Toledo-Lucas County health commissioner with a request for a formal public investigation into the serious, recurring health problems reported by neighborhood residents.

The subpoena was issued to OCA by Sunoco attorney Louis Tosi in connection with a class action lawsuit filed by fifteen neighbors of the refinery in March. OCA isn't a party to the suit, didn't organize support for it, and has had minimal contact with the plaintiffs' attorney. Nonetheless, Tosi's subpoena demands that OCA turn over virtually every scrap of paper and computer file in its possession that has anything to do with the refinery... including the 473 original survey forms.

The whole history of the campaign and the subpoena (from OCA's viewpoint) can be read here. But here's the bottom line:

On November 22, Judge Franks denied OCA's motion to quash Sunoco's subpoena and ordered the organization to turn over the survey forms within fourteen days. That clock ran out on December 6.

OCA has asked for time to contact the individual respondents and ask for their permission. Without that permission, OCA says it can't comply with the judge's order. Contempt of court citations are the likely result.

Now here's the weird part. This story was last covered by the Toledo Blade on September 9, three months ago. Since then, despite numerous OCA press releases, there's been no media coverage of any kind -- not by the Blade, or Toledo television, or the AP, or the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the Columbus Dispatch, or NPR. Nobody. Nothing. Total silence.

Try to imagine that it was a reporter or a newspaper in this situation -- facing jail time for protecting the confidentiality of low-income residents who filled out a form describing their personal health problems. Would there be media attention? The only question would be the size of the headline on the front page of USA Today.

Ohio Citizen Action needs your help in this fight. I think they deserve it. (Disclosure: I worked for OCA throughout the 1980s and my daughter works there now... which is the only reason I know about this.) Here's what you can do:

First, send an email or letter to Sunoco CEO John Drosdick asking him to contact his lawyer Louis Tosi and get the subpoena withdrawn.

Second, write a letter to the Toledo Blade asking why this story isn't being covered.

And third, spread the word. If you're a blogger, please blog this story. I don't give a crap if you link here or not... feel free to write it up yourself and take credit, but please get this out into blogspace!

Thanks.

LAPTOPS MAY DAMAGE MALE FERTILITY

I always knew the Digital Divide must be good for something.

WAL-MART ON THE CUYAHOGA: So now it turns out that Steelyard Commons, the big inner-city mall development a few blocks upstream from ISG's West Side mill, may well be anchored by a Wal-Mart... maybe even Northeast Ohio's first Supercenter.

Funny how this wasn't mentioned a few months ago, when the great new project was rolled out to delighted squeals at City Hall. Funny how it also wasn't mentioned in October, when the Planning Commission gave Steelyard a thumbs-up in a "design review" process with no tenants identified.

I could start reciting all the downsides of the Wal-Mart scenario, but Alison Grant's article does a pretty good job of that, so instead I'm just going with a prediction:

Unless it comes with unprecedented labor and community protection agreements (and I stress the word unprecedented, as in "highly unlikely"), a Wal-Mart in Steelyard Commons will become one of the most important issues in the mayoral election next year and may well cost Jane Campbell a second term.

You read it here first.

HOW MANY OF ME ARE THERE? An email this morning from Jeff Sugalski at CSU's Neighborhood Link:

NeighborhoodLink is the exclusive online home of the Cleveland Neighborhood Market Drilldown Study conducted by Social Compact!...

If you haven't heard about it, the Cleveland Neighborhood Market Drilldown was designed to provide the city, the local business community, and Cleveland neighborhoods with a unique set of dependable business-oriented data and market insights that cannot be accessed through traditional market sources. It aims to help fuel the flow of private capital by supporting informed business decision-making for future investment in Cleveland's inner city and undervalued neighborhoods.

You can visit the Cleveland Neighborhood Market Drilldown Study website on NeighborhoodLink and see what it has to offer at http://www.nhlink.net/socialcompact/.

You might remember that this is the study released with great fanfare in November that claims to prove the city of Cleveland has 100,000-plus more residents than shown by the U.S. Census... and also implies that our average income is even lower than the Census told us. This is supposed to be good news for retail development in the city -- which makes sense, I guess, if the retail you have in mind is Wal-Mart.

It does make me wonder, though: If the Campbell Administration, which has embraced the Social Compact findings, really thinks we have a population approaching 600,000 people, why aren't they loudly demanding an immediate increase in our "official" body count for purposes of Federal funding formulas... like for the Community Development Block Grant allocation? Seems like an undercount equal to the population of Youngstown is a pretty big deal.

What am I missing?

FAIRNESS AND BALANCE: Okay, since the last two entries are somewhat snarky toward the Campbell Administration, I've got to tip my hat in the Mayor's direction for two pieces of positive news:

First, while I'm one of the many local citizens who find the return of the Convention Center issue profoundly depressing, I'm glad to see Campbell staking out an early position for renovating and expanding the existing place, instead of wandering back into the swamp created by Cleveland Tomorrow and Forest City in the last go-round. The only way to keep this thing from turning into an election-year monster is to set some reasonable limits, make clear to Cleveland voters what you're doing, and stick to it. Good move, Mayor.

And a big round of applause for the Administration's dogged effort to preserve our anti-predatory lending ordinance against state pre-emption, which won an interim victory in a state appeals court last week. This fight is about more than protecting homeowners from financial victimization, though that's a plenty good enough reason to pursue it. It's also about protecting Cleveland's battered Home Rule rights from a legislature eager to eviscerate them, any time a corporate interest (in this case, the banking industry) asks them to. Once again -- good work, Mayor. Keep it up.

WIRELESS PHILADELPHIA STORY CONTINUED: Lots of discussion out there on the issues raised by Pennsylvania House Bill 30 and the municipal wifi/broadband movement exemplified by Wireless Philadelphia.

Steve Goldberg links to unhappy comments on the Pennsylvania legislation by Sasha Meinrath, who links in turn to MuniWireless.

Here's internet.com on the buzz at the WiFi Planet conference.

And here's the Philadelphia Inquirer's business columnist Andrew Cassell, who didn't like the idea of Wireless Philadelphia when the mayor proposed it, having some second thoughts in the light of Verizon's attempt to squash it.

Chris Seper, reacting to my post yesterday, says:

A source of mine at Case Western Reserve University once told me that a municipal network would never truly compete with a private provider like SBC. He compared it in some ways to bottled water versus water from the tap. A municipal Wi-Fi network (the tap water) would be slower, include a stringent filter to block a host of Web sites, and wouldn't quickly adjust for the number of users in an area (another issue that would effect Internet quality). Meanwhile, a private Internet service provider could guarantee faster and unfettered Internet use with additional services as well.

While I think the generalizations here about the quality of municipal wireless presume too much, the basic point -- that public and private network development aren't necessarily in conflict -- is accurate. After all, One Cleveland's nonprofit/public network may be costing SBC some business, but it's creating a market for Cisco and IBM. And there's a good chance that the planned Philadelphia system -- and others like it -- will be implemented in partnership with private wireless vendors.

So the argument in Pennsylvania isn't really about government vs. private. It's about whether local governments can act effectively to create alternatives to existing telecoms' market dominance, when their obsolete infrastructures -- and entrenched interests -- become obstacles to community innovation.

PHILLY WIRELESS OUTLOBBIES VERIZON, BUT WHAT ABOUT OTHER CITIES? The City of Philadelphia has cut a special deal to sidestep a legal veto of its planned citywide wi-fi system by Verizon. But the bill just signed by Pennsylvania's Governor gives private telecom firms "wi-fi veto power" over every other municipality in the state. Chris Seper links to a long Washington Post summary of the Pennsylvania outcome. Here's the Philadelphia Inquirer story.

I talked earlier with Ed Schwartz, the Wireless Philadelphia committee member who, along with city IT chief Dianah Neff, led the fight to save the city's plan from legislative extinction. Ed's read on the situation is that "the Philadelphia exception" will make it much more difficult for Verizon and other private telecoms to veto municipal initiatives throughout the state. After all, how do you tell Pittsburgh or Reading that you won't permit them to do what Philadelphia is doing?

Besides, the new legislation exempts municipal systems that are already up and running by January 1, 2006... so its immediate impact could be to make 2005 a very good year for wi-fi system architects and equipment vendors throughout Pennsylvania.

Two other results seem certain: First, Philadelphia's wi-fi system is going to happen; and second, legislation like Pennsylvania's will soon be moving through committee in dozens of state legislatures, including Ohio's.

Chris' piece, echoing a recent One Cleveland blog entry by Lev Gonick, says that community broadband in northeast Ohio may be sheltered from these attacks by One Cleveland's unique public/nonprofit partnership. Lev writes:

This brings me to the Philadelphia story. When the AP wire service first ran the story on that City's ambitious effort, David Caruso from AP contacted me. I outlined that OneCleveland, in contrast to a city-centered strategy like Philadelphia, was actually a community network. OneCleveland has subscribers, including a number of cities. This is only one of the major differences. In OneCleveland, many subscribers have, or are thinking about, enabling free wireless services to enable important public policy priorities within the unregulated spectrum known to support WiFi. This is very different than going into business to develop a revenue model for public wireless services.

It's hard to say how true this might be. Certainly One Cleveland has done a brilliant job of putting NEO "ahead of the curve", as Lev's title says,in deploying very big bandwidth for government and nonprofit users. (And let me stress that Lev deserves huge credit for conceiving and pulling this off.) It's also true that, to the extent One Cleveland customers including cities, schools and libraries use that bandwidth as backhaul for free wi-fi service to their constituents or neighbors -- as Case now does for its guests -- a law like Pennsylvania's wouldn't affect them.

But the issue gets more difficult when we start thinking about systems to get robust broadband (like 5 to 10 mbs standard 802.11(b) service, or the 50 mbs access now available on the Case campus) to lots of city households and small businesses on an affordable, sustainable basis. Under current law, for example, there's nothing stopping Cleveland Public Power from laying out a fiber network through its substations (actually, it already has one) and then providing wireless broadband service to the surrounding neighborhoods very cheaply. Ditto for the Cleveland Public Schools, or the library system. But such a system, including access to the Internet through One Cleveland or another carrier, might be too expensive to simply offer for free -- there might have to be either a small regular user charge or a significant subsidy from some other public funding pot. If there's a charge and the sponsor is a public entity, a Pennsylvania-style law would give a veto to SBC, whether the public entity gets its bandwidth from One Cleveland or elsewhere.

I think we might not be very far from considering this kind of option -- maybe even in the context of City elections next year. And certainly a role for City government in supporting neighborhood wi-fi initiatives will be on the table very soon. So the spread of Pennsylvania HB30-style legislation needs to be watched carefully by Clevelanders who don't want our city to be prevented from leapfrogging the digital divide, and moving aggressively -- and together -- into the new economy.