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?