MAYOR "CELEBRATES" BEING 12TH POOREST CITY: Well, at least the PD figured out that the new American Community Survey numbers on poverty in Cleveland are questionable. So they put "no longer poorest U.S. big city" in a headline across the top of page 1, then spent half the lead paragraph as well as half the story explaining that experts think the numbers behind the headline are, well, very suspect. I guess this is the New Journalism.

But then, of course, we have this:

But other poverty watchers are heartened. They say Cleveland's optimistic numbers reflect trends reported by social service agencies and hunger centers, where demands for services have stabilized or fallen.

"I wouldn't write this off to just sampling error," said Claudia Coulton, co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University. "That's quite a big difference being reported. I think we can believe there are fewer poor people in Cleveland."

And the Mayor, with depressing inevitability, "cheerfully welcomed the news".

"Cleveland has moved to No. 12 on the list. I want to celebrate that," she said at the opening of a $3.8 million extension to Bessemer Avenue near I-490 industry Tuesday morning.

She credited her administration's success at building homes and creating jobs in the city.

Problem is, what the new survey numbers say is that there were a lot fewer poor people in Cleveland a year ago, when the Mayor was calling an emergency Summit On Poverty and Coulton and other "poverty watchers" were crowding in to tell us how bad things were. Guess we didn't really need that Summit after all. Never mind.

The PD didn't ask the Mayor if she also cheerfully welcomed the new ACS' news that 50,000 people left the city between 2002 and 2004, bringing the total population below 415,000. Maybe that's tomorrow's front page headline.

FREE SPEECH & HIGH ROAD RETAIL: Just posted at NoClevelandWalmart, a couple of modest proposals.

And speaking of modest proposals, I endorse Jeff's.

END OF A MEME; "POOREST CITY" MOVES TO DETROIT

Lots of people including Brewed Fresh Daily have noticed this story on the AP Newsflash (it will be in the PD tomorrow). It says ... wait for it... Cleveland isn't the poorest big U.S. city any more!

The story is about the new Census Bureau 2004 American Community Survey. (Incidentally, props to the AP for putting a live link to its source at the end of the article.) A year ago the Plain Dealer headlined the 2003 ACS finding that Cleveland ranked last in four income and poverty categories, turning "the poorest city" into Cleveland's Meme of the Year. I tried to explain at the time that the ACS statistics were, to put it politely, a little hinky. But hey, I said, if being last on a list gets some attention for poor people, where's the harm? More power to the hinky statistics.

Now a year has passed, the Great Wheel of the Census has turned, and the Meme must die. Well, actually, it just has to move to Detroit. Let's hope they treat it well.

Seriously, folks, do not take this stuff seriously. The ACS is a national poll -- not an actual census -- with big error margins for data as local as one city. As an example, I pointed out last year that the survey's population and household counts for 2000 through 2003 made little sense. Here are the same numbers for 2001 through 2004:


Yes, you're reading the chart right. The ACS says Cleveland's population living in households jumped by almost 10,000 between 2001 and 2002, then plummeted by nearly 50,000 in the following two years... even though there was almost no change in the number of households in the city.

If you think this could be true, well, okay, take the rest of the ACS seriously. But if you doubt that one out of every ten Clevelanders left town in the last two years, you probably should extend that skepticism to the ACS' assertions that:

Cleveland's overall poverty rate fell from 31% to 23% between 2003 and 2004, and
our percentage of children in poverty fell from 47% to 32%, and
our median household income rose nearly $5,000 in that same miraculous year...

... all of which are part of our purported leap from "poorest city" to "twelfth poorest city".

Bottom line: We didn't learn anything new about poverty in Cleveland from last year's American Community Survey, and we won't learn anything new from this year's, either. This city -- like Newark, Miami, Detroit, and many others -- faces a deep-rooted crisis of underemployment, undereducation, and underearning. Who cares if that crisis is "worst" or "twelfth-worst" in the nation?

It's plenty bad enough either way.

SCARY MATH FOR OHIO DEMS: democracy guy is peeved at Chris Bowers of MyDD for this call for support for Paul Hackett as the Democratic challenger to Dewine next year. It's hard to argue with Tim on this one.

It's possible that Hackett's lifetime total of blog entries now exceeds his lifetime total of votes received. (Update: I checked and his technorati count is only 3,216 posts, whereas he got almost 56,000 votes just in the general against Schmidt. But google "+hackett+congress+2005" and you get 130,000 links... so I guess this wasn't an entirely cheap shot.) This is not Hackett's fault, of course; he racked up a lot more votes in his one big race than anybody expected when he entered. There's a good argument that Hackett should be running for something statewide next year.

But the top of the ticket? Pleeeee-uz!

Here's a cold hard fact for Hackett's netrooters, and others unfamiliar with Ohio politics, to contemplate: Going back at least to 1970, only one candidate of either party has been elected U.S. Senator or Governor in this state without either a) running and losing in a statewide general election at least once before, or b) running successfully for a statewide office "down ticket". That single exception was John Glenn in 1974 -- and even the world-famous astronaut lost his first Democratic primary for the job (to Howard Metzenbaum in 1970).

Ohio elections are fought out in five significant media markets and a dozen smaller ones. Paul Hackett is known to more than a handful of voters in just one -- the third biggest, Cincinnati. Rep. Tim Ryan, the other much-mentioned Senate candidate in blogland, is well known only in Youngstown, which doesn't even make the major market list (though he's also been covered on Cleveland TV).

Short of being the first American to orbit the earth, or hosting a popular national television show, the only way for a rising candidate to get known to voters in all these markets is to run for statewide office. In a year like 2006, where the top of the ticket is shared by the U.S. Senate and Governor races, turnout averages about 3.5 million. All these folks vote in the top races, so winning there takes 1.75 to 1.8 million votes. (The last Democratic Governor, Dick Celeste, got more than 2 million votes to win in 1982 and 1986.) But with some falloff down the ballot, it's possible to become Attorney General or Secretary of State with smaller numbers; Lee Fisher won the 1990 Attorney General's race with 1.68 million votes (a stunning first-time performance) but lost it four years later with 1.63 million. Hence the rule... the first time you run statewide, you run for a down-ticket office, and/or you lose.

The Democrats' big problem for 2006, in an otherwise extremely promising environment created by the GOP's Coingate Follies, is this: There are no candidates for U.S. Senator or Governor who've taken that first run.

Here are the Democrats who've gotten more than 1.4 million statewide votes in non-Presidential years since 1990:

Lee Fisher, Attorney General, 1990 -- 1,680,698 (won)
Lee Fisher, Attorney General, 1994 -- 1,625,247 (lost)
Sherrod Brown, Secretary of State, 1990 -- 1,604,058 (lost)
Lee Fisher, Governor, 1998 -- 1,498,956 (lost)
Mary Boyle, U.S. Senate (vs. Voinovich), 1998 -- 1,482,054 (lost)
John Donofrio, State Treasurer, 1998 -- 1,472,940 (lost)
Mary Boyle, State Treasurer, 2002 -- 1,459,113 (lost)
Charleta Tavares, Secretary of State, 1998 -- 1,404,081 (lost)

Fisher led the Democratic ticket each year he ran. Boyle led the ticket in 2002, when the Democratic candidate for Governor was Tim Hagan. Both are from Cuyahoga County, and neither is presently in office or running for anything, though Fisher keeps flirting. (Boyle went to nursing school after her last campaign.) Sherrod Brown has decided to remain a Congressman. Donofrio, the longtime Summit County Treasurer, is now the county's "Fiscal Officer" and seems happy where he is. Tavares is a busy Columbus City Council member who will probably run for higher office... eventually.

All of these people are, like, a million votes closer to having a statewide voting base of 1.8 million than Tim Ryan... or Marcy Kaptur... or Ted Strickland or Michael Coleman, for that matter. And they're way, way closer than Paul Hackett. Which is why the Ohio Democratic Party has a big problem, despite all those titillating stories from the GOP Statehouse and Dewine's tanking poll numbers. Outside their own districts and the blogosphere, nobody knows who the "mentioned" Democratic candidates are.

You can't beat somebody with nobody. If 2006 was going to be an up-or-down referendum on Ohio Republicans, they'd be in terrible trouble. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Send in the lions. But that's not the way it works.

Ohioans will have to vote for somebody for each of those offices. The GOP candidates at the top of the ticket will be well-known statewide candidates, neither of whom will be named Taft. They'll have huge financial resources to boost their recognition and define their opponents. Meanwhile, it seems all the Democrats will be introducing themselves to most of the state for the first time -- and despite the netroots' touching faith in the power of online fundraising, they are not gonna outraise the Ohio and national GOPs, with a Senate seat and major state government both on the line.

This adds up to a very uphill slog for Ohio Democrats in 2006. Of course Taft might make it easier by hanging in there, and the Coingate Curse might continue to spread. National and international developments (yes, Tim, I mean Iraq among other things) might make conflicted Republicans like Dewine even more vulnerable. And the guys at MyDD might come up with a way to raise a million dollars a day for their favorites.

That's a lot of "mights". What's certain is that some Democrats with no statewide history have to figure out how to get 1.8 million votes by November 2006, or lose trying.

History says they can't do it. Maybe history is bunk this time.

But that's some scary math.

OHIO'S "RECOVERY" CONTINUES

Policy Matters has posted its new Job Watch for August. A picture is worth a thousand words...

COUNT THE CARDS

Pho has some excellent questions about the "economic impact study" of casino gambling released by "the GC Partnership" yesterday.

THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE OF CLEVELAND WI-FI IS TO INVENT IT

Full Cleveland is very enthusiastic about the One Cleveland/Intel "Digital City" announcement, pointing to Dan Hanson's Inside Business article about it, but is disappointed by the lukewarm "old Cleveland" reaction of unnamed bloggers who apparently just want their free wi-fi.

In response, George at BFD gets a little snarky, apparently feeling they're talking about him even though his first reaction to the announcement was very happy.

Is FC talking about my comment that the announcement would leave a lot of people scratching their heads? Well, I admit this wasn't exactly an expression of dumbstruck awe, but then, the announcement (let alone the standard 1C hype surrounding it) wasn't exactly news. After all, City Council appropriated the money for the City part of the project back in June. But Lev Gonick's detailed strategy paper about the whole enterprise is news, or at least important new information -- hence my main point, that interested people should take the time to read it.

I'm a One Cleveland fan. I think Lev and his many collaborators are creating something remarkable and important. I think One Cleveland is a very good thing for northeast Ohio.

But it isn't a community wi-fi project. 1C isn't a "community network" at all, in the ordinary meaning of that term -- i.e. a cooperative or nonprofit provider of direct networking service to individual users. Despite Lev's frequent use of that term, and his frequently invoked imagery of a wireless cloud throughout the city and the region, service to individuals, households and businesses is not in 1C's charter or business plan. Its market is, and always has been, governments and nonprofit organizations. Big nonprofits, for now... smaller ones, eventually. But never direct service to household and business users.

If you read Lev's strategy paper, you'll see that he wants One Cleveland to bring us all into one coherent, standards-based ultra-broadband network that involves multiple providers including private ISPs. He calls for a set-aside of system resources for low-income communities, which could support nonprofit community networks among other things. And 1C encourages its nonprofit institutional members, right now, to consider including public wi-fi access in their technology plans. So you can't say that Lev and other 1C folks aren't interested in engaging the broad public (whether laptop toters or low-income households) in the system they're building. They clearly are committed to doing just that.

But that's not the same thing as "delivering wi-fi to the masses".

George points out that the last paragraph of Lev's paper seems to say "that there isn’t a wireless strategy for OneCleveland, but there should be." He wonders if this might represent a "sea change" in 1C's planning.

Here's what I think. I think we should stop wondering about what One Cleveland will or won't do to bring cheap (or free) broadband to us masses. The best way to predict the future is to invent it, yes? If we think a better future for Cleveland requires a community-driven, affordable broadband network now (citywide a la Philadelphia and San Francisco, or neighborhood-level a la Houston), then let's start figuring out how it could happen, and get on with making it happen, our own selves.

Do we think there should be a different kind of city initiative? Well, we're voters, there's an election on, and time's a-wasting to make it an issue.

Or do we think it makes more sense to just start building and meshing local networks? Well, then let's start doing that.

"We make the road by walking." Something tells me that the sooner grassroots broadband advocates start making our own road, the sooner we'll find One Cleveland ready to join us on the journey.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET FIRED, CONTINUED: In a comment on my last post about the mysterious continued employment of CEOGC director Middleton, the anonymous "Mike" says:

check the initial plain dealer article on this. it identifies ms. middleton as the sister-in-law of louis stokes. hmmmmm. any further explanation necessary?

"Mike" is right, sort of. The PD article he's talking about is no longer at cleveland.com, but it's in the Library database here. (You need a library card to get to it.) It comes with this correction:

The following published clarification appeared on March 15, 2005: A story on Page One on Sunday about the Head Start agency in Greater Cleveland described Executive Director Jacqueline Middleton as Louis Stokes' sister-in-law. She once was married to the brother of Stokes' wife, but the two divorced years ago.

What does this tell us? Your guess is as good as mine or "Mike's".

MEET THE VLOGGERS

In an email from Phil Shapiro to the CTCNet Members list:

i've been getting a lot of email questions today about how people can best get into video blogging (vlogging.)

here's an excellent web site that explains how, created by none other than ryanne hodson... http://www.freevlog.org/

... i also highly recommend fireant as free software for subscribing to video blogs. http://www.antisnottv.net/

thanks for forwarding this info to folks you know who might be interested in it.

And now I have. You're welcome.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET FIRED IN THIS TOWN? This morning's Plain Dealer has another installment of the Jackie Middleton Saga at the top of page one.

Let's try to get a grip on this story: Middleton is the executive director of CEOGC, the county's poverty program (the actual generic term is "Community Action Agency"), where she was promoted from the staff ranks twelve years ago. For all intents and purposes, this is a public agency. The vast majority of CEOGC's responsibility is receiving Federal money for low-income assistance programs (Head Start, heating assistance), passing it through to subcontractors, and monitoring its expenditure. It's run by an eighteen-member board that includes appointees of the county, the mayor of Cleveland, the Cleveland school district, and a couple of "community representatives" from its five Neighborhood Opportunity Centers. The board chair, until very recently, was the extremely well-connected Cecelia Huffman -- former Council clerk, former political aide and counsel for Mayor Mike White, and recently retired "Director of Public Policy and Communications" for Metrohealth.

It seems that Middleton, with the cooperation of Huffman and other board members, managed to work her annual pay package up to $240,000 and change. This would be a striking number for a public administrator under any circumstances -- it's more than twice what we pay the Mayor and close to what we (very controversially) pay the CEO of the School District -- but it's even more riveting for three reasons:

1) This is the county poverty agency, for pete's sake.

2) CEOGC's Head Start contractors, like most Head Start providers across the U.S., pay their teachers a barely living wage and other employees, like kitchen staff, even less. To add insult to injury, CEOGC Head Start center staffers had their pay cut by as much as 50% from December through February because CEOGC didn't get state reimbursements it was figuring on. (Link requires a local library card.) There is no record that Middleton took the cut herself. The deficit that caused this action has still not been fixed... the agency is still $1.7 million in the red, according to today's PD story.

3) Despite the fact that Middleton is the director of a public agency serving the poor, with a board of public representatives, that pays its ordinary workers badly and has a major deficit -- despite all that, nobody here in Cleveland said anything about her remarkable salary until the HHS Inspector General's office blew the whistle in January.

Since then, of course, much has been said. Stories about Middleton's loose ways with the agency credit card started appearing in the PD -- trips, clothes, town cars, gifts from Tiffany's for "volunteers". In May, the CEOGC board reduced Middleton's pay to only $162,000. Huffman removed herself from the board chair (she's still a member) and the county commissioners replaced her with George Forbes, who's supposed to clean the place up. Mayor Campbell and County Commissioner Hagan called for Middleton's resignation. So did the Plain Dealer. Congresswoman Tubbs-Jones and Commissioner Jones demurred, calling for "cooling off" and due process. A committee was appointed. Another HHS review was supposed to happen.

Then last week, in response to its continuing deficit, CEOGC terminated seventeen administrative staff including senior researcher George Zeller -- but not Middleton.

Tubbs-Jones and Jones called on May 6 for a "90 day cooling-off period". We're now at Day 107. At Middleton's new, lower salary that's about $47,490 worth of temperature reduction.

What do you have to do to get fired in this town?

MEET THE BLOGGERS EPISODE 3: BILL PATMON

George, Tim and I interviewed Cleveland mayoral candidate Bill Patmon on Thursday. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

George had a little trouble with the sound levels on this one... he's done some enhancement but still recommends listening with headphones.

Patmon was once the executive director of Glenville Development Corporation and then served as the neighborhood's Councilman from the mid-'80s through 2001, when he lost his bid for re-election to Sabra Pierce Scott. For a taste of the topics we covered, look at George's notes. And, of course, listen to the whole interview.

P.S. Thanks to Anthony Fossaceca of the Triozzi campaign for contributing the cool new "Meet The Bloggers" logo!

UM... DID WE FORGET MARCY? In my funk about Sherrod Brown pulling out of U.S. Senate contention, it dawned on me that there's another possible Democratic statewide candidate who isn't being discussed at all -- Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo.

Kaptur has represented the 9th District since she took down Reaganite Ed Weber in 1982. That campaign, fought largely on the issues of Social Security and natural gas decontrol (i.e. heating bills), was one of the first visible tears in Reagan's first-term invincibility cloak. Now in her twelfth term, Kaptur is Ohio's senior Congressional Democrat. She stomped her GOP opponent in the last election by a 68-32% margin. (You might remember the flap over this story that was supposed to be her undoing. She apologized, and went on to win going away.)

I called someone in Toledo who knows Kaptur very well to ask if there's some reason she's staying off the 2006 radar screen. He said no, not particularly; she's got a whole lot of seniority in the House, but has long had an interest in bigger arenas.

So why isn't Kaptur on anybody's hot list of potential top-of-the-ticket Democrats? I'm really curious.

TIME FOR YOUR CLOSE-UP, GOVERNOR: Hypothetically Speaking shows us the way to Taft's courtroom video, and other things...

LEV LAYS IT OUT: Yesterday's announcement that Cleveland has been chosen (along with Corpus Christi and Taipei) as an "Intel Digital City" will leave many Clevelanders scratching their heads. Why is everyone so excited about wireless networking for policemen and code inspectors? Does this have anything to do with large-scale public Internet access or not? What's the bigger plan?

One Cleveland impresario Lev Gonick finally makes a really serious effort to answer these questions in the latest posting on his "Bytes From Lev" blog. The piece, called "Designing a Metropolitan Strategy for Wireless in Cleveland", is long and difficult, and the "strategy" it describes is quite complicated... nothing like the quick-win municipal and community wireless plans being rolled out on a daily basis in other cities. There's no point in trying to summarize it. Block out a couple of hours, find a quiet corner, and read it yourself.

Whether or not you end up convinced, you'll certainly end up educated.

(Thanks, Cuyahoga Planning Commission Weblog.)

SHERROD BROWN DECLINES SENATE RUN: At 8:15 this evening Congressman Sherrod Brown posted a piece at GrowOhio.org announcing that he won't seek the Democratic nomination for Mike Dewine's U.S. Senate seat in 2006.

This, on the same day Ohioans were hearing that the ranking Republican in state government faces criminal charges in Franklin County. The prosecution of Taft pushes the Ohio GOP closer to a historic electoral meltdown next year -- but only if the Democrats can field real candidates at the top of the ticket. This "if" just got significantly bigger.

Brown, Secretary of State for two terms in the Celeste '80s, is one of only two active Democrats who've ever won a statewide election. (The other is 1991-95 Attorney General Lee Fisher, now running a big nonprofit in Cleveland.)

The leading Democratic candidates for governor, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and Congressman Ted Strickland, have had little statewide presence until this year (apologies to Coleman, but being a losing candidate for Lieutenant Governor doesn't really count... ask Charleta Tavares and Peter Lawson Jones).

Congressman Tim Ryan of Youngstown, who's said to be thinking about the Senate race that Brown declined, is only in his second term -- and in a small media market. Wunderkind Paul Hackett scared the bejesus out of the GOP in the 2nd Congressional District a couple of weeks ago, but he still hasn't won any office higher than Milford City Council.

Against this background, I think Sherrod's decision not to reach higher -- either for governor, or to unseat Senator Dewine -- has to be counted as a serious setback for Ohio Democrats. This is not a team that can afford to sit its starters. We just don't have that deep a bench.

Very disappointing.

WALKEN TO THE WHITE HOUSE? A few weeks back democracy guy was pitching the concept of "Rat Pack Democrats" with lots of Sinatra iconography. It all had to do with Hillary Clinton, somehow.

Well, that might be okay, but has Hillary hosted Saturday Night Live? Has Ol' Blue Eyes? No, but Christopher Walken has... like, every third show since 1990. And now he's running for President!

Well, maybe not really, but think about the possibilities. You want persona? You want badass? You want Walken!



To millions of voters, Walken is Gabriel in Prophecy I, II, and III, who talked like this: "I'm an angel. I kill newborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. And occasionally, when I feel like it, I tear little girls apart. And from now till kingdom come... the only thing you can count on... in your existence... is never understanding why."

Is that tough enough for you, buddy? I think the terrorists will get the point.

Download the Walken for President campaign poster here.

ZELLER CANNED BY CEOGC: George Zeller, the widely quoted and respected research director for the embattled Council of Economic Opportunities of Greater Cleveland, has been let go by CEOGC director Jacqueline Middleton.

The Plain Dealer and other media will report tomorrow that CEOGC notified Zeller and several other staff of their terminations on Friday as a result of the anti-poverty agency's continuing financial meltdown.

Recent scandals around Middleton and the CEOGC board's travel spending have led to calls by Mayor Campbell and others for Middleton's resignation, and to the appointment of George Forbes as a "reform" board chairman for the group.

In an email to me this afternoon, Zeller wrote:

Read the Plain Dealer tomorrow. CEOGC is rife with nepotism and cronyism. They have a lot of fiscal mismanagement, and the organization is teetering right now. I had nothing to do with that, but they unwisely decided to pick on me first.

Zeller, who worked for CEOGC for twenty years, is a recognized expert and main source of statistics on unemployment and poverty in the Cleveland area for reporters, city officials and others. See the CEOGC website's research page for a sample of his work, including the most recent State of Poverty in Ohio report.

THE TREACHERY OF FRIENDS: The comments on yesterday's post on SB 82, the bill passed by the Ohio Senate in June to ban residency requirements for municipal employees, show that further explanation of the issue (and my anger) is required.

The Ohio Municipal League, which opposes SB 82, says the following: The cities of Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, and Dayton have charter provisions requiring virtually all their employees to live in the city. The fact that these requirements are in city charters means that they were adopted by popular vote (the Cleveland rule was adopted by the voters in 1982.) In addition, Youngstown has a City Council ordinance requiring residence in the city, and Cincinnati has one extending the rule to Hamilton County. Canton recently repealed a similar ordinance as part of a collective bargaining agreement.

All told, the OML has identified 125 Ohio cities and 13 villages which have some kind of residency requirements in their charters, i.e. adopted by a vote of their citizens. Many simply require city managers to live in the cities they serve.

Senate Bill 82 would unilaterally repeal all these local, democratically adopted requirements unless they include their entire counties, plus all adjacent counties, in their permissible "residency zones".

Some mayoral candidates (Draper, Nelson) have said they support gentler versions of the Cleveland residency rule, e.g. allowing city workers to live elsewhere after some years of service. Under current law, such changes can be adopted like any other charter amendment, by popular vote. Under SB 82, any version of local residency requirement that doesn't include all of the county, plus Lorain, Medina, Summit, Portage, Geauga and Lake Counties, would be illegal. The preferences of local citizens, including candidates for mayor, would be immaterial.

As you can probably tell from my previous post, I'm furious at my Senator, C.J. Prentiss, and my old friend Dan Brady for their role in passing this thing. As I said, I think ending the residency rule will inflict a major blow on Cleveland's housing market and on neighborhood development efforts, which are already facing a serious new problem on the commercial side from Steelyard Commons. But that's not why I'm furious.

I'm furious because our two Democratic State Senators -- people who've built their careers posturing as small-d democrats, fighting to empower urban poor and working people against the special interests -- are helping the police unions and suburban Republicans to strip the people of Cleveland, including me, of our power to decide this local governance issue through the local democratic process.

I heard Frank Jackson at a campaign event last night where he was asked about SB 82. Jackson said that he opposes the bill for two reasons:

first, because whether you like the city's residency rule or not, it was put in the City Charter by a vote of the people 23 years ago, and everyone who's taken a city job since then has known what they were getting into;

and second, because SB 82 is another serious attack by the General Assembly on the city's basic home rule rights -- the guarantee enshrined in Article 18 of the Ohio Constitution that "Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government". (I listed some of the other recent Statehouse moves to thwart or eliminate Ohio cities' self-governing powers in this May 27 post.)

I think Jackson nailed it. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that his opponent Mayor Campbell, on this issue, would agree with him completely. I'm very sure that most Cleveland voters would; why else would the FOP and its friends keep trying to eliminate the residency rule through a top-down imposition from Columbus, rather than a democratic process here? Polling results, that's why.

If Senators Brady and Prentiss think Cleveland's residency rule is unfair, they had every right to circulate petitions, try to put a Charter change on the ballot and campaign for its passage. I would have disagreed, but I wouldn't have thought they were doing something vicious or slimy -- just misguided. If they persuaded a majority of voters to agree with their view, well, that's the way democracy bounces.

But what they've done by supporting SB 82, quietly conspiring with the GOP to take away the democratic rights of the people they're supposed to represent, is vicious and slimy. The appropriate word is probably "treacherous". Unless they find a way to undo it, this treachery should be a cloud over Prentiss' and Brady's (and Dann's and Fedor's) heads for the rest of their political lives.

Perhaps the most important lesson is this: With all the talk about new "progressive" leadership in Ohio's Democratic party (like here, here and here), ordinary Democrats in Cleveland and other cities need to start asking "What's in this for us?" The specific question we should be asking today is, do "progressive Democrats" actually believe in grassroots democracy and self-government? Are they committed to preserving the state's hundred-year-old principle of local home rule against corporate/GOP efforts to take it away? Or are they ready, like "progressives" Brady and Prentiss, to toss that principle aside when it's convenient -- like, to make the police unions happy?

Voltaire: "Lord, protect me from my friends. I can take care of my enemies."

MAYORAL CANDIDATE WEBSITE UPDATE: For your browsing pleasure, here are the Cleveland mayoral candidate websites that seem to be up and running at this time, at least as far as Google can tell:

Campbell
Jackson
Draper
Triozzi
Patmon
Lynch
The Plain Dealer says that there were ten mayoral candidates at the Black Women's Political Action Committee event last night. The Stonewall Democrats list fifteen people with petitions out. But the filing deadline isn't till August 25, so who knows what lurks?

Draper's site has his newly released education program posted.

SAY IT AIN''T SO, C.J.!

Like everyone else, I learned from Thursday's Plain Dealer that my State Senator, Minority Leader C.J. Prentiss, quietly voted a month ago for Senate Bill 82, which strips Cleveland and other Ohio cities of the right to impose residency requirements on municipal employees. Cleveland's other Senator, Dan Brady, actually co-sponsored it.

To be fair, Brady said he wanted to get rid of residency when he ran for mayor back in 2001, so give him points for honesty. But I don't recall Prentiss ever mentioning this issue.

Senate Bill 82 is now in the House, where it will probably pass easily. Then Cleveland and other cities will challenge it in court and probably succeed in overturning it. For the reasons why it shouldn't withstand a court test, see the comments in the Legislative Service Commission analysis.

If it does become law, however, expect a rapid exodus of thousands of Cleveland's better-off homeowners -- police, firefighters, City Hall managers and professionals -- from Old Brooklyn, West Park, Collinwood, Lee-Harvard and other neighborhoods East and West. Look for a headlong race to get out early, before the exodus flattens the city's home values. Expect new house construction in the city to come to a screeching halt.

Go ahead, tell me I'm an alarmist. I don't think so.

As the PD points out, the police and fire unions have been trying to get this bill passed for years, but it's been stopped in the Senate. Why did Democrats Brady and Prentiss, along with Dann of Youngstown and Fedor of Toledo, decide to give the GOP leadership the votes and "bipartisan" cover to pass it this year?

Prentiss' office told me this morning that she voted for SB 82 because "people have a constitutional right to live where they want." Uh huh. That's good. C.J. Prentiss supports constitutional protection for white flight.

JACKSON'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN NOW ON LINE: In a post a week and a half ago, my esteemed guest Geoff pointed out that "it would be nice" if Frank Jackson's mayoral campaign had his economic development program posted on its website.

Well, now they do, and here it is (in pdf format).

Jackson's communications director, Mary Anne Sharkey, says they'll also have his education program posted in the near future.

MEET THE BLOGGERS, EPISODE 2: JAMES DRAPER

George, Tim and I interviewed Cleveland mayoral candidate James Draper Monday. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

As with Triozzi last week, the interview covers a lot of ground.

Two down, at least five to go. Who'll be next? Stay tuned.

(See Tim's comment on the interview at democracy guy.)

SCHOOLS DAZED

On Wednesday, in the immediate aftermath of the Cleveland school levy's 65%-35% defeat, I wrote: "[W]hen you get a resounding vote of no confidence like yesterday's, somebody has to resign. At least that's what happens in democracies. Who's it gonna be?"

The answer: On Friday, Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigned as schools CEO.

I was going to write that no, this was not some great insight on my part... everyone knew BBB was planning to leave, and this announcement would have happened even if the levy had passed. I still think this is right, but Chris Sheridan's column Sunday morning has a different take: "Byrd-Bennett saw 'exit' sign: She's the issue."

Sheridan is a strong BBB sympathizer with personal access, so maybe she's got it right. Or maybe Byrd-Bennett has decided to make a big dramatic deal of her long-planned exit in order to give voters the impression of upheaval. In any case, she'll still be in the big chair until well after November, the same Board of Education will commence the search for her successor, and she'll keep her influence during and after the transition. (Note that BBB is making a big point about wanting to stay in Cleveland, assuming, of course, the right new job. I'm sure it's looking for her right now.)

All in all, have we seen any sign so far that anyone in charge at the CMSD has learned anything from Tuesday's humiliation? Nope. What would constitute such a sign? Well, how about the resignation of someone who wasn't already planning to do so? Like, let's say, the Board of Education.

Here's board president Margaret Hopkins at the press conference Friday: "We believe we are on the right course. We know the direction we want to head in."

She really said that. I saw it on TV.

See, this is why it's a good idea to have elected officials in charge of public agencies. Politicians have their downsides, no doubt about it, but they know that when you lose an election by a 2 to 1 margin, it's time to stop believing you're on the right course. Your people are trying to tell you something. Stop babbling and start listening.

I've known Miggie Hopkins for a long time -- since she was a staffer at Cleveland Women Working in the '80s, long before she became an education reform pro and got her Weatherhead doctorate in "organizational behavior". She's a good, smart, dedicated person. But she doesn't seem to recognize the textbook crisis for a public organization in a democracy -- the disintegration of leaders' legitimacy when their constituents neither know them nor trust them.

Healthy democracies avoid this kind of crisis by having elections -- not just occasional referenda on policies, but real, competitive elections for leadership. Cleveland voters haven't elected the leadership of our school district for over a decade. It's really starting to get obvious.

Back in 2002, when the permanent continuation of mayoral control was on the ballot, I remember Reverend Marvin McMickle -- pastor of Antioch Baptist Church and veteran Shaker Heights school board member -- in the LWV debate, warning that depriving the schools of their own political leadership wouldn't seem so smart when times got tough and levies had to be passed. But in 2002 things still looked promising, Campbell and BBB were still popular, an operating levy was not on the agenda, and the media knew what was good for us. So McMickle was widely ignored.

Reverend McMickle can say "I told you so" any time now. In three short years, district finances have collapsed. 1400 teachers are gone, and more are going. Campbell and BBB no longer have coattails. Two crisis levy attempts have gone down in flames. And the system's "leadership" -- the anonymous, unelected school board we voted to keep -- is reduced to oblivious talk about being on "the right course", while the mayoral candidates frantically maneuver to avoid and assign blame.

Somebody needs to stop whining about East Side turnout and West Side resentment, and start talking honestly about this hole we've dug our school system into. Not the financial hole, the political hole -- that big empty space where we should find accountable leaders and clued-in citizens talking to each other, not this toxic soup of frustration, distrust, lame excuses and shredded happybabble.

Strangely enough, this could be the school board's moment. Really, I'm serious. The members I know, like Hopkins, are smart people who certainly aren't in this for the money. With the mayor's race up for grabs and the CEO a lame duck, they could decide to be the leaders the district needs, rather than the meek rubber stampers everyone expects. To start with, they could put aside the excuse-making and "right course" talk, and head out personally to the wards where the levy got skunked, to talk with the citizens about why.

Or they could resign, preferably at high noon on the steps of City Hall. That would certainly up the ante for the schools in the mayor's race.

FINGERS ARE A-POINTING: Democracy Guy responds to the Mayor and her opponents trading blame for the levy failure at an East Side event thusly: Campbell Plays Race Card To Scapegoat Levy Defeat?

I think this is kind of a cheap shot, for reasons I explain in a disjointed comment. For more about why the Council President deserves a fair share of the blame for the levy's horrible timing, if not for the campaign's infamous "stealth strategy", take a look at this post from way back in April.

IRAQ LOSSES MOUNT IN CLEVELAND AREA: Three Marine Reservists from Seven Hills, Willoughby and Tallmadge were among the Haditha casualties being mourned yesterday by crowds in Brook Park and Cleveland. Their deaths brought to sixteen the number of servicemen from Cuyahoga and surrounding counties killed so far in Iraq. Nine of those sixteen deaths have occurred since January. (See a new sidebar feature, "In memoriam", to the right.)

The Plain Dealer reported today from Brook Park:

...the sentiment seemed to be almost universal: Support the troops, but not the war.

Not far from the reserve headquarters, Joe and Diane Hamilton held a garage sale at their home on Sandfield Street. They said everyone who came through talked about the soldiers killed in Iraq, and all had the same opinion.

"It's time to bring them home," said Joe Hamilton, surrounded by used sweatshirts, books and bric-a-brac. "Everybody says so. How long are we going to stay over there and what's the point anyway?"

"We got Saddam, we toppled his government, now let's get our troops out of there before more die."

Northeast Ohio's most recent losses are Lance Corporal Brian Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby; Lance Corporal Daniel Deyarmin, 22, of Tallmadge; and Corporal Jeffrey Boskovitz, 25, of Seven Hills.

A total of 88 Ohioans have died on military duty in Iraq to date... 35 of them since the beginning of 2005. You can learn more about each of them at Faces of Valor (just type "Ohio" into the "Search DoD announcement" blank and click "Submit".)

P.S. More on Ohio's losses and personal memories of Lance Corporal Montgomery from ClevelandSteamer at Daily Kos. (Thanks, HS.)

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECOVERY? Despite all those "strong national economic growth" stories, non-farm employment in Ohio has just struggled back to its level of a year ago, and is still significantly lower than it was in Spring and Summer 2002, at the "end of the recession".

Policy Matters' new "Job Watch" has the details.

MORE TURNOUT WOULDN'T HAVE PASSED THE LEVY: So it seems the PD is selling a narrative about the levy defeat. Janet Okoben has another story today about how big turnout by Old Brooklyn and West Park voters shot it down ("West Side 'no' vote sealed tax's fate"). And today's editorial says:

[T]hose who resent the system - mostly on the West Side - turned out heavily, while those who use it most - East Siders - failed to show at the polls. According to unofficial results, Cleveland's two westernmost wards, 20 and 21, cast nearly 9,000 ballots. That was 657 more than the total cast by six East Side wards - 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 12.

As a college professor of mine used to say: "That is true, but it is not significant." I pointed out yesterday that the levy would have failed even if the turnout in Old Brooklyn and the far West Side (Wards 15, 16, 19, 20, 21) had been zero. Here's another interesting way to look at the same numbers: Given the "Yes" and "No" percentages in each ward, if the identical number of voters (say 4,000) had turned out in each of Cleveland's 21 wards, the levy would still have lost by a 59% to 41% margin. (If you want to see the numbers, email me.)

This was a citywide defeat. The School District's leaders, their friends, PR consultants and patrons need to take responsibility for losing the public's trust... the whole Cleveland public, East, West and South.

MEET THE BLOGGERS, EPISODE 1: ROBERT TRIOZZI

George Nemeth, Tim Russo and I interviewed Cleveland mayoral candidate Robert Triozzi last evening. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

Triozzi responded to questions on more than a dozen different topics, ranging from Steelyard Commons to biotech development strategy to Council reduction -- and, of course, the levy vote. I won't characterize his answers... listen to the whole thing.

Next Monday, candidate James Draper. Stay tuned.

NO CONFIDENCE VOTE

Last November, one of Cleveland's largest modern voter turnouts rejected a school tax increase 55% to 45%.

Yesterday, in a one-issue election designed to produce a micro-turnout, about 43,000 voters rejected a smaller school tax increase 65% to 35%.

It's hard to see how the voters' message could be clearer. It's even harder to see what could be gained by trying the same thing again in November.

Contrary to this morning's PD, it was not just "a core group" of angry Old Brooklyn and West Park voters who defeated the levy. Issue 3 passed in only eight of Cleveland's twenty-one wards. It was voted down by three East Side African-American wards (1, 2 and 10) as well as by strongly Hispanic Ward 14. In fact, if no one at all had voted in Old Brooklyn (Wards 15 and 16) or the "far west side" (Wards 19, 20, and 21) the levy would still have failed 51% to 49%.

This was a citywide defeat. It was a broad vote of no confidence in the people running the schools... in particular, Byrd-Bennett and the Mayor-appointed, anonymous school board. Whether it was "fair" or not is beside the point. These are public schools we're talking about, and they need the support of the public to survive. They don't have it.

It's time for "school leaders" and "school advocates" to stop looking for villains and start looking in the mirror. Could it be that their long struggle to insulate the School District from "politics" (i.e. from normal democratic governance and accountability to the voters) has been all too successful? Could it be that they've quietly communicated to voters a message that the levy campaign finally, stupidly said out loud: "We want your money but we don't want you!"? Could it be that the voters -- not just in Puritas Park but in Lee-Harvard and South Collinwood -- are not so interested in paying for a school system that they no longer own?

Is it time yet to reconsider whether this appointed school board thing was really such a good idea?

Well, we'll see. But one thing is pretty obvious... when you get a resounding vote of no confidence like yesterday's, somebody has to resign. At least that's what happens in democracies. Who's it gonna be?

TUESDAY BRAIN BLOGGING

How's this for a mayoral campaign theme? "Time for Cleveland to invest in our brains, not just our buildings."

Jane Campbell is using Empowerment Zone funds to pilot "CLIMB", a computer/Internet skills certification and financial literacy program that aims to get low-income adults back on the education ladder. Her office has spent two years devising the CLIMB strategy in cooperation with Tri-C, the Cleveland Housing Network, community technology centers and IBM. The Mayor wants to take it citywide and include more than 30,000 people.

Meanwhile, Frank Jackson has called for making Cleveland "a place where the first two years of college education is free".

Both proposals directly address the most important cause of Cleveland's chronic poverty and economic stagnation -- the city's very low level of educational attainment. (That's Census gobbledegook for too few college graduates and too many people without high school degrees.)

But either program would cost a lot of money. The projected price tag for 30,000 people to participate in CLIMB is more than $20 million. We don't have any details of Jackson's proposal, but sending (let's say) 10,000 people to Tri-C for two years would cost something like $30 million.

Which raises the question: If we really want the 21st-century workforce everybody says we want, isn't it about time for the city (or region) to figure out how to raise the money for serious, strategic adult education investments like Campbell and Jackson are proposing? Is that as important as financing a convention center?

There's one of my questions for the candidates who "Meet the Bloggers".

CLEVELAND SCHOOL LEVY: VOTE YES

I'm planning to vote for the Cleveland school levy Tuesday and if you're a city voter, I urge you to do the same.

I'm voting "yes" for the simplest of reasons -- I believe the school system actually needs the money. Really, really needs the money.

The system would need the money even if its investment policy had been competent. The system would need the money even if Cleveland Clinic made a significant cash contribution in lieu of taxes. The system would need the money even if all the tax abatements went away tomorrow. The system would need the money even if Barbara Byrd-Bennett was paid the same salary as a teacher.

Yes, long-term solvency has to be won through statewide school funding reform -- more money in the pot, property tax reform, the whole bit. But no, this will not happen with state government firmly in Republican hands. In November 2006 we have a chance to do something about this. Maybe this time there's even a chance of success. But our schools are melting down today.

Yes, the levy campaign's widely publicized "stealth" strategy is both appalling and dumb (especially since they couldn't resist talking to the newspaper about it). Yes, it highlights once again the deep anti-democratic bias of the people driving education policy in this city -- the people who still think an appointed school board was a wonderful idea. The "school board" is a joke. The School District administration is secretive, arrogant and unaccountable to citizens. The responsible adults -- mayoral candidates and state legislators -- need to be confronted about these issues.

But none of this changes the fact that the schools desperately need more money to preserve any reasonable semblance of education for the more than 60,000 kids -- our neighbors -- who have nowhere else to go.

So if you live in Cleveland, please get to the polls tomorrow and vote yes. I'm going to.