WKSU: "CLEVELAND DEFENDS PREDATORY LENDING LAW IN SUPREME COURT"

Here's the audio (mp3). This is an extremely important case on the municipal home rule front. Can a city go further to protect its citizens and neighborhoods from exploitative lenders than the industry's friends in the General Assembly want it to go? Stay tuned.

CONGRESSMAN STRICKLAND MEETS THE BLOGGERS TOMORROW: Rep.Ted Strickland, the Democratic frontrunner for Governor, Meets The Bloggers tomorrow. Any questions? (The commenters at Buckeye Politics have a few.)

A BUNCH OF NUMBERS ABOUT OUR ELECTRIC RATES

The Federal Energy Information Administration collects data every year from electric utilities, both public and private, on (among other things) their power sales and revenues. The complete annual databases back to 1990 are available for download. Last night I downloaded the files for 2004 and took a look.

Cleveland Public Power sold 410 million kilowatt-hours for home use last year for $43,854,000. That works out to 10.7 cents for their average residential kwh.

CEI/First Energy sold 1,587,912,000 residential kwh for $161,911,000, or 10.2 cents for the average kwh.

These average prices put Cleveland's two electric utilities right at the top of Ohio private and municipal electric providers. EIA's database shows eight other investor-owned electric utilities operating in Ohio, along with 43 other municipal power systems that serve more than 1,000 homes. Only one of them -- Toledo Edison, CEI's sister company -- had an average residential charge exceeding ten cents per kwh. The large majority were under nine cents, and more than half billed an average of less than eight cents.

CPP's average charge to commercial customers -- 10.55 cents -- was also the most expensive among significant Ohio private and municipal utilities, exceeded only by tiny Haskins Village (which seems to really stick it to the 39 businesses on its municipal system).

Like I've been saying, the most expensive electricity in Ohio comes from CPP.

But perhaps more troubling from an economic standpoint (i.e. our jobs rather than our budgets) is where our electric rates fit in the national picture. Here are the average kwh charges paid last year by commercial users in the twenty biggest Mid-Atlantic and Midwest cities, according to the EIA data:


Was someone talking about reducing the cost of doing business in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio? Maybe we could start with CPP and CEI rates. Just a thought.

DAVID ABBOTT MEETS THE BLOGGERS

The Executive Director of the George Gund Foundation answers questions from George, Tim, Pho and me about the Fund for Our Economic Future and its Voices And Choices program. It gets more argumentative than most of these interviews (and I ask one really, really longwinded question).

Update 12/1/05: Pho has some thoughts about the interview, as do the commenters at BFD.

ANOTHER NEW INDUSTRY WE WON"T GET IN NORTHEAST OHIO BECAUSE MIT'S RESEARCH IS ALWAYS AHEAD OF CASE

Will tinfoil protect your brain from the wi-fi freaks? Maybe not...

(Courtesy of wetmachine, which also has a roundup on municipal broadband politics around the country.)

DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN 2006: CHEAP SHOTS AND CRACKPOT PRAGMATISM?

Brewed Fresh Daily links to state senator Marc Dann's blog, which links to a Monday Plain Dealer story about the state's Third Frontier Internship program, in which "a spokesman for the Democratic party" says: "We're now using borrowed money to pay for these things, and I don't think people voted to use their bond money on internships. I think it's pretty outrageous."

Of course this is complete BS. No one is using bond money for any Third Frontier program, because no such money exists -- the ballot issue just passed two weeks ago and authorizing legislation has yet to be introduced. The current "Third Frontier Internship" program is supported by Federal Workforce Investment Act funds. Whether it's a good idea or not is, of course, open to debate, but this is the first time I've heard Democrats complaining about it. The internship program has been part of the Taft Third Frontier operation since 2003. I'm curious whether Senator Dann (or Mr. Rothenberg, the Party "spokesman") raised any objections to it before just about every Democrat in the General Assembly voted to put Issue 1 on the November ballot.

(It's too bad the PD didn't bother to check out the "payola/corporate welfare" angle with some of the Cleveland companies that are sponsoring 3F interns through Tri-C's Unified Technology Center, presumably with the enthusiastic blessings of Senators Prentiss, Brady and Fingerhut.)

As a partisan Democrat, this kind of lame cheap-shotting just drives me nuts -- especially when my party's "leadership" substitutes it for the hard work of coming up with better approaches to serious issues. Wasn't that John Glenn I saw fronting the Issue 1 commercials? If the Taft Third Frontier model is "corporate welfare", where's the Democrats' alternative program for driving high-tech job development? Do we have some better way than the 3F internships to get Ohio college students engaged with local tech companies? How would the Democrats do it better?

Of course Dann and Rothenberg don't want to talk about that -- all that matters is that there's a possible "pay to play" angle here (some internship money went to an organization connected to House Speaker Husted). Who cares about the actual merits of the program you're discrediting?

A few days ago, I spoke with a Democratic state representative who complained that the House Democratic leadership is actively discouraging its members from pushing alternative legislative proposals, in the belief that attempts to legislate will just get in the way of exploiting the corruption issue.

The correct term for this is "crackpot pragmatism"... and it's the best possible way for the Ohio Democratic Party to elect another Republican Governor -- probably one named Ken Blackwell.

POCKETBOOK ISSUE SEEKING GOOD OWNER

Are you a newly elected (or re-elected) member of Cleveland City Council? Are you looking for a way to make your mark as a people's champion... stand out from the City Hall crowd... get noticed by voters in your own ward and across the city?

Baby, have I got an issue for you. Four words: Cleveland Public Power rates.

Average monthly cost of 750 kilowatt-hours,
November 2004 through October 2005

CEI (First Energy) -- $85.50
CEI with Cleveland's 5% aggregation discount -- about $81

Cleveland Public Power -- $85.33

Yes, you're reading that right. For the last year Cleveland municipal electric households have been paying an average of 5% more for electric service than our neighbors who are served by CEI/First Energy -- who are, themselves, paying some of the highest private electric bills in Ohio.

For the ambitious City Council Member, this is an issue that has everything. It's about money out of tens of thousands of voters' pockets, every month. It's about broken promises (think of all those people who switched to CPP in the '90s because it was going to save them money!) It's your handle on Big Issues -- the household energy crisis, the cost of doing business in Cleveland, the plight of the poor.

Best of all, it's an issue you can actually do something about -- because CPP is a City agency, and City Council is its board of directors. That's you, my man (or woman).

This is a huge political opportunity, just sitting there waiting for someone like you. So go for it! Get yourself on Council's Public Utilities Committee. Do some homework. Make some noise. Become the voice of the angry ratepayer. Figure out a way to push those rates down.

That way, in four years, you can run as the Leader Who Lowered Our Electric Bills.

Otherwise... you can run as just another politician who failed to.

A LITTLE WAL-MART STORY: Sitting around the kitchen counter this morning with daughters. Oldest daughter says she's sorry she missed last weeks' showings of the new Wal-Mart movie. I say I didn't like it that much, and was frustrated by one particular thing -- the filmmaker has a number of former W-M workers on camera repeatedly but never once asks "How much were you paid?"

Oldest daughter then tells us about a woman she knows, the mother of a friend, who has worked at a Cleveland-area Wal-Mart for nearly seven years. This woman's current pay, after seven years on the job: Seven and a half dollars an hour.

Oldest daughter says the woman continues working for Wal-Mart mostly to get health insurance, which costs her a large part of her pay. After seven years the coverage is supposed to become vested. As she approaches her seventh anniversary, she has suddenly found herself under the microscope, and is pretty sure they're building a case to fire her before that magic day arrives.

Just thought I'd pass this along in case anyone is confused by that $10 average pay figure Wal-Mart likes to toss around.

(Oldest daughter also relates that she herself applied for a Wal-Mart job several years ago and was told she would start at minimum wage.)

WAL-MART SHOT DOWN BY VOTERS IN LORAIN, PULLING OUT IN VERMILION, RAIDED BY FEDS IN PHILADELPHIA

John Ryan has the stories here and here. But he points out that Wal-Mart "pulled out" of Steelyard Commons, too.

Speaking of Steelyard Commons, Tim Ferris mentioned to me the other day that there's a lot of heavy equipment on the site but most of it seems to be just sitting there. He's right... there's not much actual construction work going on, at least to the drive-by eye. I wonder why.

SMALL STEP: In response to Thursday's post, I got an email this morning from newly appointed Cleveland School Board member John Moss:

Actually, school board members are paid nothing.

I agree, the more information the public has the better.

A small step, but you may post my e-mail: KarenMoss@adelphia.net.

(Karen is John's wife.)

UNCOOL: On Tuesday Brewed Fresh Daily reported that a link to my "Voices and Choices vs. storm windows" post in a Cool Cleveland article had been scrubbed by CC honcho Thomas Mulready, along with a link to this from democracy guy. Thomas told George "he wasn’t going to promote people who sit on the sidelines and carp while others are doing economic development."

The BFD post drew a string of comments and led to more carping from Tim on his new blog... which I'm sure means more comments at BFD today. And there was this. Boy, you just can't buy this kind of exposure! If Thomas isn't getting advertising money from V&C he certainly should be.

So I've been sitting over here in the the UnCool Kids' Corner, pondering the meaning of it all. Did I get "censored"? Does this mean Cleveland Diary is too cool for Cool Cleveland to handle? Should I give a crap? Why would Thomas give a crap?

Here's the thing: I've never actually expressed an opinion about Voices and Choices here. All I wrote in the post that offended Thomas so much was that Pho's account of their Town Meeting was great, that I wasn't there because I decided it was too nice a day to spend indoors, and that it didn't sound like I'd missed much. Not what you'd call a ringing denunciation of V&C.

Okay, I called it "groupthink". Hey, there were nine hundred people there, thinking together. If that isn't a "group think", what is it?

And after the last two days' weather, is there really any doubt that my storm windows were a higher priority?

I admit that I didn't think much of V&C before, but I also didn't think much about it. If some foundations want to spend $3 million of their own money on a big expensive talkfest, what's it to me? They spend money on a lot of things, including some things I understand and support, and some I don't. Nothing new there.

But now I'm kind of compelled to take a personal interest in V&C. So I went back and read the Town Meeting "Participant Guide". And then I re-scanned the rest of the V&C website... and had a phone conversation with Josiette White of the V&C staff... and looked at the interview on WVIZ's Ideas last night (I missed Abbott and Whitehead but caught the two staffers.)

And now I have many questions about Voices and Choices.

That's for another post... but here's a tickler. The following appears in the Participant Guide as a statement of fact:

The cost of government in Northeast Ohio, as a percent of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), is more expensive than anywhere else in the country. Government
here costs taxpayers 21% of GDP. Nationwide the cost is 17% of GDP.

Pretty explosive, yes? But where does this "fact" come from? No source is cited. I googled the whole unattributed passage and found the same exact words, also unsourced, in this brochure from the Northeast Ohio Sourcing Office. (Is this plagiarism? Steve Koff, call your office.) So I called NEOSO and asked its director, David Akers, for the source. Akers wasn't sure -- he knew he'd read it in some study, he thought he had it in his file, and he'd get back to me. (Very nice guy, incidentally.) I haven't heard anything yet.

So... here we have Voices and Choices preparing its Town Hall participants for a discussion of "challenges" related to regional governance by giving them a dramatic -- indeed politically incendiary -- "fact" that's been lifted, uncredited, from another organization's material, which also offers it without a source and can't provide the source when asked.

Now where I come from, that's not cool.

More later.

GOOD MOVE, FRANK: Mayor-elect Jackson does the smart thing... and does it promptly. An excellent sign.

Now let's see if the School Board members who wanted to keep the job can start doing it. It would be helpful for Jackson to lay out publicly what he expects from them in the next two years. It would also be helpful if the Board members started acting like a real, open, accountable public body. One small step: Tell the staff to post the District's most recent audited financials and the minutes of each Board meeting on the District's website. Another small step: A public email address for each Board member.

Incidentally, School Board members are paid almost nothing. This is probably a mistake, but it's what we've got, and I'm sure it makes it very difficult for them to commit the time that the job really requires. An open discussion of this problem wouldn't hurt.

A DAY WITHOUT GROUPTHINK: Pho has a terrific post about the Voices and Choices "town meeting" in Akron on Saturday.

I registered for this shindig Friday evening and started out for Akron Saturday morning, but somewhere around Brecksville I realized it was way too nice a day to spend groupthinking in Rhodes Auditorium. So I turned around, went home and put up a couple of new storm windows. My voice, my choice.

Doesn't sound like I missed much.

JACKSON AND THE SCHOOL BOARD: As he promised during the campaign, Frank Jackson is expected to ask School Board members to resign and let him decide whether to re-appoint them. It looks like some are not in a mood to cooperate. John Ryan and Marybeth Matthews think they should.

Nothing would please me more than a new School Board, but I've got misgivings about Jackson's position on two levels.

First, there's the problem of respect for the law. Jackson, as Mary Ann Sharkey acknowledges in the PD article, has no legal basis for his demand. The Board members (including the "big Campbell supporter" who got his appointment the day after Jane Campbell lost the election) are duly constituted public officials who do not serve at the Mayor's pleasure. They aren't an advisory committee to the Mayor. They're the city's legal board of education, with all the powers and responsibilities that entails.

The Mayor has only two formal powers in this mislabeled "mayoral control" system: The power to veto the Board's choice of a CEO (which means he will control this key decision assuming it isn't made before January) and the power to appoint new Board members when seats open up. Five of the nine members' terms will end in 2007, so that's when Mayor Jackson gets to install his own majority. Until then, Campbell's appointees remain in charge. That's not an accident, it's exactly what the law -- which Clevelanders voted to keep on the books just three years ago -- intends.

Those looming 2007 appointments, plus the immediate CEO hiring process -- plus just being Mayor -- give Jackson lots of leverage over broad school policy for the next two years. He doesn't need to demand immediate, extralegal authority; he probably won't get it anyway; and by trying he'll guarantee a terrible relationship with the (totally legitimate) Board majority. What's the up side of having this fight now?

My second misgiving is about Jackson's stated political basis for the fight, the "standards" that Jackson says he wants to apply to his appointments: "active involvement in the schools, have attended public schools and have children who attend or attended Cleveland schools... people who have a stake in the system."

Really? Only former CMSD students with kids who've gone to CMSD schools should serve on the School Board? Does Jackson really mean to say these are the School Board's only true constituents, the only Clevelanders who really "... have a stake in the system"?

Wow. So much for all the other residents and taxpayers. So much for all those people who've ponied up private school tuition over the last twenty-five years so they could stay in the city without putting their kids at risk. So much for people who've directly experienced schools that really work -- schools, for example, that actually get lots of their graduates into colleges other than Tri-C. So much for learning the lessons of last August, when a strategy aimed at excluding "non-public-school voters" from the levy vote led to a disastrous backlash. So much for Candidate Jackson's house-meeting promise that his education strategy would unite the interests of both public and private school families.

Apparently we're about to revert to the self-destructive notion, practiced by Byrd-Bennett and her compliant Board, that the only community that matters is the "school community" of CMSD parents, staff, volunteers, and supporters. Only we're taking it a step further, and insisting on a Board composed entirely of the parents.

For Mayor-elect Jackson, this is exactly the wrong message, and he needs to stop sending it right now. The CMSD is not a club, to be run by and for its user-members. It's a public institution, a tax-supported government agency, owned by the whole public of the city. The School Board must start representing that whole public... and so must Jackson, in appointing them. Trying to throw serving members off the Board early because they aren't part of the schools' current customer base... well, I don't think that's ground that the new Mayor really wants to be standing on.

Update: You know what? Seven of the current nine Board members are either Cleveland public school graduates, and/or parents of Cleveland public school students or grads. It's right there in their bios on the CMSD website. The exceptions are Vice Chair Grady Burrows and new member John Moss (not yet profiled on the site). So... what's the issue again?

PUCO SAYS "FORGET IT", CHAS SAYS "YES"

With this little election on my mind, I never got around to reporting the PUCO's decision on the SBC/AT&T merger case and the consumer proposals discussed here last Thursday. Long story short, on Friday morning the PUCO gave its blessing to the companies' joint operations in Ohio and declined to impose any of the conditions requested by consumer intervenors, except to require SBC (which will now be called AT&T) to offer "stand-alone" DSL service. Bummer. But not necessarily the last word on the subject since, as you may have heard, there's an election for Governor coming up... and the Governor appoints the PUCO.

If you're a true rootin-tootin policy geek, here's the download link for the actual decision (a looong pdf file). For extra points, see how long it takes you to find where they quote me.

The good news is that Chas Rich of NEO babble has agreed to my proposal for a Meet The Bloggers debate on the subject. I've promised to buy the coffee, but he apparently expects me to also "hand him his lunch" or something. Maybe we'll just split a sandwich. Details to follow.

ABE LINCOLN, PLAGIARIST

Here's Cleveland Uber Alles on the Sherrod Brown "plagiarism scandal".

What he said.

CROSSING THE RIVER: About 97,000 Clevelanders voted in the mayoral election yesterday... not terrible, though about 12,000 short of the total in 2001 and 70,000 fewer than made it to the polls for Kerry/Bush in 2004.

Frank Jackson's 55% was almost exactly what the WKYC and Plain Dealer polls were showing last week, before Campbell's ballyhooed "You don't know me" TV ad. She seems to have picked up most of the late undecided voters, but that was nowhere near enough to make the race close. Jackson was sitting on solid, overwhelming support in Wards 1 through 10 and showed significant strength in Collinwood and the "white" West Side wards as well -- he broke 40% in Wards 13, 14 and 19 and got 35-40% in 17, 18 and 20. As the polls suggested, this election was over weeks ago, if not months.

As I wrote yesterday, Frank Jackson will start his mayoralty as an East Side politician with a significant West Side voter base. Conventional wisdom is starting to congeal around the idea that this has nothing to do with him personally, but is simply an effect of lucky positioning as the "not Jane" candidate. This ignores the strong campaigns mounted by some West Side City Council members (notably Cimperman, Westbrook, Brady and Sweeney), as well as Jackson's many house meeting appearances and doorknocking trips over the past six months. A lot of West Side voters have talked with him in settings which demanded less rhetorical polish than the TV debates, and it's evident from the vote totals that many of them liked what they saw.

So Jackson has a rare chance to solidify a base on both sides of the river and both sides of the city's racial divide. But he's not going to accomplish this through leadership deals, task forces, summit meetings, or grand top-down schemes. He can accomplish it by going back out to his voters on both sides of town, listening to them seriously, dealing with them forthrightly and honestly, and offering them effective connections to City Hall and to each other.

Jackson is making history as the first person in over a century to go straight from Council to the Mayor's Office. But he can make some real history and turn his "one city" rhetoric into reality, by being a Mayor who keeps practicing the skills of a good Councilman -- a leader who empowers, networks and supports other leaders of all kinds, in all parts of the community.

Wouldn't that be a refreshing change?

TURNOUT NOT ABYSMAL, BUT PRETTY BAD: In the October primary, 132 ballots were cast at my precinct, 15F in Brooklyn Centre.

When I voted at 3 today I was ballot number 120. The election judges said the morning was slow but things picked up in the afternoon. At least 75 or 80 more people should vote in that precinct during the evening rush, maybe even 100. So today's vote in 15F looks on track to beat the primary by 55%-65%... a normal increase, but pretty low compared to the 272 votes we cast in 2001.

Projected citywide, that would mean 85,000-95,000 total votes, compared to 110,000 in the 2001 race. But remember, we've got a hot Council race pulling up turnout in Ward 15. My best guess, not that it matters at all: 80,000 to 85,000.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: So developer Mitch Schneider has blown another few thousand bucks on a last-minute full-page Plain Dealer ad, pleading with Cleveland voters to re-elect Jane Campbell because Steelyard Commons will be so wonderful for the city. (There's no link available but it was on yesterday's page B-5, on the other side of the obituary page.)

The ad rehashes the same old stories: 1,800 jobs, taxes galore, Wal-Mart shopping right in your neighborhood. Ron Copfer competently dissected these arguments at BFD. If you're new to this debate, and not sure what to think, I'll self-servingly refer you here and here.

But what strikes me about the ad is Schneider's apparent desperate need to believe that his project can still, somehow, be a big electoral asset to the Mayor -- long after the Campbell campaign itself has stopped talking much about it.

Mr. Schneider, here's the truth: As much as any one person, you cost Jane Campbell this election. You helped hammer the last nail into the coffin of her relationship with several City Council members who are now helping to deliver West Side votes to Jackson. You cost her unified labor support, which as a previously endorsed incumbent was still hers to lose before "Wal-Mart Commons" put it out of reach. You saddled her with one more front-page round of backroom deals, broken promises and controversial associations ("the Wal-Mart mayor") just when it could do her uphill re-election effort the most damage.

All that political damage to the Mayor could have been avoided if the Steelyard Commons project had been pursued more openly, more modestly, more patiently, with a genuine willingness to bend to legitimate community interests. But you dissembled about the project's true nature early, attacked and demeaned its doubters, maneuvered and dodged to avoid any compromise, and ultimately got the Mayor to align herself with the absolute worst nightmare of a lot of people who were once among her best friends.

For this, she got some campaign money, a chance to cut your ribbon, and some job projections that nobody believes. And now... a full-page ad that will make no difference at all.

Nice job, Schneider. With friends like you...

"CLEVELAND'S NEW MULTI-RACIAL MAYOR": Mandatory reading at democracy guy.

Jackson personifies the truth that "race" is a political and social construct, not a biological one. If you take a kid whose dad is African-American and whose mom is Italian-American, plop him down in Cleveland and let American life take its course, what do you get? A "black candidate" for mayor.

We may well be watching the exit of the last "white" mayor of Cleveland. Can the "white" minority of the city get our collective head around this demographic fact? Judging from the poll results -- with over a third of "white" voters and nearly 40% of "West Side" voters choosing Jackson in the Channel 3 poll last week -- we're making some progress, Mike Dolan and his ilk notwithstanding.

Sixteen years ago Mike White was elected mayor by West Side voters who preferred him to George Forbes. For a brief moment, as an East Side politician with an energized West Side base, White had the chance to remake the conscious racial-political geography of the city. For whatever reason, he made no serious effort to do so, and the moment passed.

Having taken a very different path, Frank Jackson is about to arrive at that same moment of opportunity. The difference is, he will have gotten there far more deliberately... and he appears to be a far better man for the task.

DOLAN MAILING CONDEMNS JACKSON FOR PREDATORY LENDING LAW THAT DOLAN VOTED FOR (AND CAMPBELL SUPPORTED)

The infamous "Be true 2 da game" postcard from Ward 21 Councilman "Wal-Mart Mike" Dolan showed up in my Ward 15 mailbox today, so I guess it must be part of the Campbell campaign's general West Side end game. (Unless, of course, the Mayor disowns it... but I haven't gotten that email yet. I wonder what the Red Room Revolutionaries think?)

My favorite line on the postcard is this item in the list of Frank Jackson's "game-playing":

Sponsored legislation that caused many Financial Institutions to stop mortgage lending in Cleveland.

We're a little light on footnotes here, but the only Jackson-sponsored ordinance dealing with mortgages that I know of is the 2003 predatory lending ordinance. You know, the one the Campbell Administration proudly supported and has been defending in court against state pre-emption. The one that passed City Council on January 13, 2003 by a vote of 21 to 0. (Here's the relevant City Record... see pages 6 to 9.)

21-0. Why, that means Mike Dolan must have voted for it! He must feel terrible, now that "many Financial Institutions have stopped mortage lending in Cleveland" because of his vote. I wonder if he's going to publicly apologize to the residents of Ward 21.

What a weasel.

ANOTHER REASON TO BELIEVE IN CLEVELAND

Stephen Colbert profiles the 11th Congressional District and discusses recipes with Congresswoman TJ.

Cleveland is where the term "rock and roll" was born. It's also the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where rock and roll goes to die.

"MILKING THE CASH COW": If you pay property taxes and/or vote in Cleveland, I strongly, strongly recommend this on-the-scene report from MaryBeth Matthews on how that big school renovation project -- you know, the one we voted a special levy for -- is going. Be sure to read the comments.

DEMOCRACY REDUCTION UPDATE: Peter Kirsanow of the Ohio Citizens' League got back to me yesterday and arranged to have a pdf of the League's City Council reduction petition emailed to me today. (Thank you, Mr. Kirsanow and Ms. Battaglia.)

It turns out that the samizdat copy I quoted Wednesday was not the final version, though the content is identical. I've posted the PDF version of the real thing here (Acrobat Reader required). Here are the key parts:

The Council, not later than ten (10) days after the certification of the [initiative] election results by the Board of Elections... shall redivide the City into seven (7) wards...

The Council of the City shall consist of eleven (11) members, four (4) of which shall be elected at-large and the remaining seven (7) of which shall be elected by ward.

The eleven (11) Councilmen to be elected under the terms herein shall be elected at the next regular Municipal Election in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 3 of the Charter of the City of Cleveland. The division of the City into wards existing at the time of the adoption of this amendment shall continue until changed as provided.

Everything I said about this proposal on Wednesday stands, with one exception: It looks like the proposed Charter change, if passed in 2006, would require new Council elections in November 2007 (Cleveland's next "regular municipal election") rather than 2009. So the twenty-one Council Members elected next Tuesday would have only two years to serve their current wards, before being thrown into a bloody free-for-all for the seven new, much bigger ward seats or the four citywide seats. (Like I said, good luck getting your Councilman to return a call during those two years... he or she will be much too busy talking to campaign funders.)

Another, possibly unintended consequence would be to sever the elections for Council and Mayor. Council election years would now be 2007, 2011, 2015, etc. while the Mayoral race would still be in 2009, 2013, 2017, etc. Gotta think about he consequences of that.

WHEN YOU SAY "ALTRUISM" TO ME, BUDDY, YOU BETTER SMILE: Chas Rich at NEO babble gets into some heavy snark about the Cronin/Stuber op-ed I linked in my last post. Chas thinks Kevin and Angela are insufficiently "altruistic" (i.e. just trying to get money for their programs) and that there's no reason to expect SBC to provide broadband service in less dense, poorer parts of their market. He apparently likes the idea of getting SBC to butt out of municipal broadband investments, though.

Well, I helped draft the proposals he doesn't like as well as the one he does, and I make no claim of "altruism" in the matter. I damn well do want more support for Digital Vision's member computer centers as well as community networking efforts like Tremont WiFi. I think SBC should help provide it if they want to keep their privileged position in Ohio's telecom market while merging with one of their major competitors.

And yes, I think broadband Internet access is now a necessity for many households and a basic telecom service for all. If SBC wants to be a privileged "incumbent provider" and buy out competitors at the same time, they should at least be required to get that basic service rolled out to all their customers in affordable configurations... which, at this point, they haven't.

So Chas, you want to step outside and settle this? I propose a debate on the subject. In fact, I propose making it a Meet The Bloggers event (sorry, George and Tim, but if we can't get Jackson and Campbell in the same ring why not me and Chas?)

Come on, Chas, you and me. I'll buy the first two rounds of coffee.

PUCO DECISION IS IMMINENT ON SBC/AT&T MERGER: The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is scheduled to rule tomorrow on the request by SBC and AT&T to approve their operation as a merged telecom provider in Ohio.

Ohio is one of two states where PUCs are still pursuing real investigations before applying the rubber stamp. The other is California, where the regulators issued a "proposed decision" two weeks ago approving the merger, but attaching some conditions proposed by consumer and community technology advocates.

A similar list of conditions is on the table in Ohio, put forward by a coalition that includes the Ohio Consumers' Counsel, community groups from Dayton and the Appalachian region, and two Cleveland groups represented by Joe Meissner of Legal Aid -- the Neighborhood Environmental Council and the Coalition for Fair Utility Rates. They're basically about broadband affordability and access for residents of Ohio's central cities as well as rural areas. (I had a hand in putting the list together as board president of the Ohio Community Computing Network, which consulted and provided testimony for some of the community intervenors.)

A few of the proposed conditions:

No more efforts by the merged company to restrict investments in broadband networks by local governments

Universal availability of DSL internet service for residents throughout the SBC service territory, within three years

A combined Lifeline rate of no more than $25 for basic telephone and broadband service for low-income homes

Funding support for community technology centers in low-income areas, as well as nonprofit community networking efforts

Kevin Cronin, a longtime community tech advocate here, and Angela Stuber of OCCN submitted an op-ed about all this to the Plain Dealer the week before last. It hasn't appeared in print, but strangely enough it's been posted since Monday in the PD's "other columns" section at cleveland.com.

Will the PUCO include any of this in its ruling tomorrow? It's not outside the realm of possibility. Their meeting starts at 10 am tomorrow, and I'm told it's viewable by real-time webcast -- check here to see if that's true. And stay tuned.

P.S. To see the Ohio consumer parties' entire proposal, download the whole brief here (it's a pdf file). The proposed conditions start on page 49.

DEMOCRACY REDUCTION: Well, I still haven't heard back from Mr. Kirsanow or anyone else from the Ohio Citizens' League, so I haven't seen an actual copy of their petition, but someone just gave me a copy of a fax of the language. Assuming it's the real thing, here's the key change it would make to the Cleveland City Charter:

The Legislative power of the City, except as reserved to the people by this Charter, shall be vested in a Council, consisting of four (4) members elected at large and seven (7) members of which shall be elected from separate wards.

So, if this thing passes, the population of a Cleveland Council ward jumps from around 22,000 (the size of Solon or Brookpark) to more than 60,000 (bigger than Lakewood).

I think it's fair to call that a two-thirds reduction in the democracy available to Cleveland citizens.

The seven new wards would have to be drawn right away, even though the current 21 wards would remain in place until the next election in 2009. So any Council Member who wanted to win one of those seven redrawn seats, let alone one of the four at-large, would have to spend his or her entire term raising money and getting known to voters outside his or her own ward. Good luck getting your Councilman on the phone for the next four years!

Of course, potential campaign bankrollers like Tony George, Michael Gibbons, and Peter Kirsanow's partners at Benesch, Friedlander -- not to mention Sam Miller, Dave Daberko, Dan Moore, Mal Mixon, Ed Crawford, etc. etc. -- would have no such problem.

Which is the whole, you know, point.

So... will this monstrosity make it onto the ballot? Probably yes. A charter amendment petition only requires signatures equivalent to 10% of the votes cast in the last regular municipal election. That'll be the one coming up, in which the turnout could easily be less than 70,000. So 7,000 to 8,000 valid signatures are probably all the Ohio Citizens' League needs to force a vote -- maybe in the Spring 2006 primary, maybe earlier.

Can it pass? Trying to cut direct Council representation by two-thirds seems like a pretty big stretch, maybe an overreach. But maybe Kirsanow and company don't care. Maybe the idea is just to keep all the Democrats in Cleveland busy and distracted next year, when the GOP wants us to focus as little as possible on the statewide election. You have to admit that would be pretty clever.

Funny thing is, there's a regular, mandatory twenty-year review of the whole City Charter coming up in 2008, a year before the next Council election. It's laid out in Chapter 39 of the Charter, right after the description of the Charter amendment initiative process. You'd think the Citizens' League folks would have noticed it when they were researching their petition. You'd think they might have said: "Oh, look... here's a process for raising our concerns about the size of City Council in an open, orderly way. Let's start educating and organizing people to participate in the Charter Review."

But for some reason, they didn't. Maybe they just didn't notice that next paragraph. Who can say?

You could ask them if they show up outside your polling place with the Democracy Reduction Petition next Tuesday.

REBECCA RYAN MEETS THE BLOGGERS (AND SHE'S NOT EVEN RUNNING FOR MAYOR)

"THE Gen-Xpert" who is "moving the American workplace to its next threshold of success" (it says so right here on her business card) comes off in this MTB conversation as a nice, intelligent, level-headed young entrepreneur/researcher who's just trying to share her data.

Well, okay... but what's all this on the website about how "her brilliance in presenting [trends] to professionals at all levels, makes her one of America's most captivating communicators and futurists"?

Can you say "cognitive dissonance"?

In case you missed it, Ryan raised some dust in Akron recently by taking a six-digit fee to produce a report for the Chamber of Commerce on how to make the city more attractive to "Gen-Xers". Her eighteen top recommendations are here. Her harshest Akron blogcritic is here.

MESSAGE TO PETER KIRSANOW: I sent this last Thursday evening to the Benesch, Friedlander email address of Peter Kirsanow, spokesman for the Ohio Citizens' League petition drive to reduce Cleveland City Council:

Dear Mr. Kirsanow,

I am writing to you as the spokesman for the Ohio Citizens' League in the
recent WEWS story about the League's petition campaign to change the size of
Cleveland City Council.

I have been unable to find a phone number, address or website for the Ohio
Citizens' League, but I gather you are one of its leaders. Could you please tell
me how I can obtain a copy of the League's Council reduction petition?

Thank you.

No response so far. Three business days and counting.