Friday, August 22, 2003
Cleveland Convention Center -- Rationalizing and Finger Pointing
Now that the CCC has been killed and it has sunk in for a couple days, the politicians and business leaders are spinning the whimpering end to the CCC tax plan as having come undone for a couple weeks.
Three days before the massive blackout in Cleveland, the lights were already flickering on plans to build a new convention center.
That's when negotiations between Mayor Jane Campbell and the Cuyahoga County commissioners went dead. Campbell invited the commissioners to hammer out their disagreements over how to use money from a proposed sales-tax increase.
She says they rejected her offer - by fax.
That would have been last Monday, when the County Commissioners approved their own plan in the game of chicken with the City.
Business leaders spent the next two days trying to salvage the sinking ship.
"It was clear by last Thursday that this was on the ventilator," said Dennis Eckart, president of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association.
On Thursday, City Council approved their own version. This would have left a week for the City and County to hammer out differences -- much like a conference committee when the House and Senate pass similar but different bills. This sort of game, required a hard deadline, but enough time to placate all. A week would have been about right. Then the blackout hit -- too much time lost.
Now the spinning that the deal was doomed, and each party claims they would have been getting out anyways.
Even if Campbell hadn't made her announcement, business leaders were ready to dump the idea of asking voters to pass a county sales-tax increase for a new center.
Eckart and Joe Roman, head of Cleveland Tomorrow, had received results of a new poll showing that 76 percent of voters opposed the tax hike. Only 11 percent said they would vote for it, with the rest undecided.
Hoping to avoid an embarrassing defeat in November and risk alienating voters for years, they began talking on Tuesday about junking the proposal.
"I thought it was appropriate that within 24 or 48 hours that we say something," said Roman.
Of course, they did issue a statement after the Mayor called the whole thing off, but it doesn't sound like they were talking much about the bad poll results.
While there is strong public support for the Riverfront site and we are encouraged that the political leadership has gotten close to consensus, a comprehensive final agreement still eludes them. The difficult economic times, understandable voter skepticism about new taxes and political indecision makes this fall a difficult time for a ballot issue.
We remain committed to going forward in the future. Our political leadership must regroup to develop a plan to invest in a convention center and our community.
[Emphasis added.]
Their own polls said no one wanted the new CCC, but that's not important to spinning.
Speaking of spinning and responses sure to generate even more fingerpointing:
Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones says Campbell called him only a few minutes before her news conference to tell him of the decision.
"I suggested that this is not something to be done unilaterally," he said. "She's a friend, but I don't think she took the proper approach."
City Council or the Mayor will shoot back, soon enough, that it was the County Commissioners "unilateral action" on the distribution of the tax money came first. I get the impression that this will go on for a while -- especially when it comes to begging for campaign donations from business groups (especially Forest City).
So, the question not yet answered: why did the Mayor so suddenly and abruptly call the whole thing off?
Campbell said later that she made the abrupt announcement because her office had received numerous questions about the convention center from reporters.
Speculation had mounted that the issue was in trouble.
"I didn't want another day of 'Is this happening, or is this happening?' " she said
The blackout was over, and her press flacks were out of ways to say "no comment"? Right.
And those poll results had nothing to do with the decision?
Campbell said she was told about the poll results before her news conference but had not reviewed the numbers.
"I just stuffed it in my purse and read it this morning driving down to Columbus," she said, referring to her Wednesday trip to meet with Gov. Bob Taft and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
The results, she said, make her decision to back away look "all the smarter."
Sure. "You know, I just put it in my purse, which is just so disorganized, and it slipped down near the bottom and I didn't even think about it until the next day when I was digging around looking for my cell phone, when I saw this crumpled paper."
Mayor Campbell, none of this makes you or your actions look "smarter."
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Getting Distracted
The homefront hasn't been perfect. I mean aside from the unemployment, bills, debts and such. My beautiful daughter
has suddenly been unable to put any weight on her left side. It started when she got up Tuesday morning. She wouldn't stand up or walk. This was very strange since she had been walking on her own since about 10 months. Her legs looked fine. No bruises, no swelling, no bone sticking out, no apparent pain. She moved it around. Even kicked me with it. She just didn't seem to want to put any weight on it. When she did try and stand, it was totally on her right leg. She lifted her left leg a little bit off the ground, like a dog who hurts a front paw. Check her temperature -- normal.
Called the wife at work to see if she knew anything about this. She didn't. Called the doctor's office yet. Talked with a nurse, and described the problem. No clue, can I get her to the office in a half-hour? Sure.
The doctor looked her over. No, doesn't appear to be anything major. He thinks it is something called " toxic synovitis." It sounds a lot worse than it is. It is an inflammation of the hip joint. It is an after-affect of a viral infection that sometimes hits children. It usually resolves itself in anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. Based on the web materials it is most common in 2 year old boys. This time, it appears to be in a 14 month old girl. Most likely one of the times we thought she was just teething in recent weeks, she had a virus.
Still we go for x-rays to be sure there is no displacement. There isn't any.
Today we went back again. He had us get blood work on her. Have to make sure it isn't something more serious like infected joint or rheumatoid arthritis. It was like a bad flashback to the worst time I gave blood. The technicians pushed the needle into her right arm to draw blood, but missed the vein. So they started rooting around with the needle in her arm to try and hit the vein. My wife was trying to keep herself from running from the room with Angie. Hell, I wanted to push them away. Angie was rapidly becoming a hysterical mess. So, they switched. Go to the other arm. This time they got it.
So, now we wait for the results and just try not to worry. Hopefully she'll be back to normal soon.
Yeah, Right
Following a horrific suicide bomb on a bus in Jerusalem that left 20 dead, and both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, the Palestinian Authority did nothing again. Oh, they claimed that they would do something. This time, for sure. Once the Prime Minister and Cabinet (the ones supposedly in charge) cleared it with Arafat, they would actually arrest some of their terrorists and close some of their offices.
Finally, Israel struck and killed a Hamas leader. Now Hamas and Islamic Jihad have declared their "cease fire" to be over. Cease fire for Palestinians apparently have a different meaning then for the rest of us. And the Palestinian Authority's response? Well, now they won't even bother to follow through on the arrests they said they were going to make but hadn't yet gotten around to.
Fallout for Mayor Campbell
I'm beginning to think I was dead wrong about Mayor Campbell and her political skills. Back on March 12, I wrote this.
The Mayor closes with an implied threat/warning to the assembled throng. She mentions that the County Commissioners have moved the Health and Human Services levy to the May ballot, in an effort to clear the way for the CCC in November. Her message is direct, that the HHS levy must pass in May. The subtext of that is A) If it doesn't pass in May, it will be on the ballot again in November; B) If you people want a new CCC and my support, then work hard to make sure the HHS levy passes in May. I know some don't find her to be a very good politician, but I have to give her credit for being very smart. She has yet to expressly support a new CCC; and without actually saying so, has forced the business community to work for her goals first. Very, very shrewd.
In the last week, though, she has taken a well-deserved beating. Her performance has forced me to reconsider my original views.
The Mayor blew it with the blackout, in part, because she wasn't even in Cleveland. For some reason she had been down in Houston. This meant no taking to the radio or even giving the appearance she was in control until well after dark. When we got power back, I caught a tape of her press conference on TV. She, naturally, looked tired. The conference was nothing special, but then I didn't expect much. The thing that stood out to me was her out of the blue declaration that those parts of Cleveland scheduled for trash pick-up would still have their trash picked-up. It was like she pulled something from the Mayor Daley, Sr. playbook for that. IT was totally comical and out of place at the press conference.
The convention center blew up on her in a way I don't think she imagined. She held back her full support, but was clearly associated with it and was going to back it. Then, when the conflict got too deep with the County Commissioners, and she ran out of time to reach a compromise; she was forced to close it all down. The time problem came from expecting a deal at the wire, but the power outage destroyed the timetable. They couldn't extend a state deadline for getting it on the ballot.
I suppose it was a politically pragmatic thing to do at that point. IF she hadn't then she would have been guaranteeing the bankruptcy of the city because of the I-X Center deal (which wasn't included by the County plan). Her problem now, she has a lot of people unhappy with her.
She now has the business community (and campaign donors) and likely the Plain Dealer Editorial Board pissed at her on one side. They backed the HHS tax in May, per her instructions. They wanted this new CCC at any cost. She never gave any real support and then totally sold them out at the last minute.
The general voting populace, already annoyed with her for appearing to have supported this thing in the first place, has even less like or trust in her. Whether she was supporting it or not, it still looks like she was backing the new CCC, but then appearing to bail once things looked bad in the polls.
The local media, likely won't be too kind to her any longer. She came in to office promising more open dealings with the public and media, but has steadily retreated behind press flacks and official statements. While not openly antagonistic like former Mayor Mike White -- who would let all local media except the Plain Dealer know about press conferences by the end of his term -- she has become more inaccessible to all but "positive" public appearances.
Mayor Campbell hadn't been doing that bad up to this point. She helped clean up a budget mess masked and left behind by Mayor White. There was a perception, that she was making progress on infrastructure issues of downtown (crumbling bridges and roads). Now that is all gone.
It isn't a certainty that she is doomed to be a one-term mayor -- she still has two years to rebound -- but she has a big hole to dig herself out of, a lot of people to placate, and no core base to fall back on and galvanize for support.
Cleveland Convention Center -- Back to Silent Stalking
Stories will still be trickling out on the CCC for a while I suspect. I'm working hard to keep a sense of blogger triumphalism out of any posts on this. My ego is getting enough of a kick from the compliments coming from George Nemeth, Steve Goldberg and John Ettore on my blogging on the Cleveland Convention Center. Not to mention the editor of Crain's Cleveland, Chris Thompson gives mentions me with regards to the CCC. The thing I have to keep in mind is that even I believe there were moments when I came perilously close to that line of obsessed crank.
The business groups that pushed the CCC say they will still work towards getting a new CCC in the future. The future, though, is not going to be for a while. Everyone agrees that the CCC is dead as a public/political issue until about 2007 -- May 2004 will have a tax on the ballot for the Cleveland City schools; 2005 will be an election year for Mayor Jane Campbell, Cleveland City Council and County Commissioner Tim McCormack; 2006 is when County Commissioners Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones face reelection.
In what should shock no one, Forest City has declared developing residential housing on the Scranton peninsula to be dead. Shocked. Shocked am I to find out that this 15 year old plan is once again dead without almost complete public subsidies -- above and beyond the 100% tax abatement that Cleveland grants to any new residential real estate development.
Plain Dealer Metro columnist Sam Fulwood sees the collapse of the CCC deal as a sign that Cleveland's "old boy network/backroom dealing" no longer works.
The anti-climactic end to the city's multimillion-dollar plans for a new convention center reminds us that the old way of doing things in Cleveland is history.
Or ought to be. [Emphasis added]
Once upon a time, a half-dozen rich, white guys sat in private rooms and drew up designs for the city. They rarely dealt with anyone outside their clubby group and never talked to the great unwashed public.
Instead, the fat cats tossed their girth around town and their money into campaign coffers. They pulled strings and their elected puppets danced.
For a while, things got done. But that was a long time ago. Voters in the city and region are too diverse and too informed for that system to last.
Old habits die slowly in Cleveland. Business as usual holds back the city.
...
If Cleveland-area taxpayers are going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for any civic project, then everyone affected is going to insist on being a part of the planning and rewards.
That means business and political leaders must listen to lots of open and frank talk. It means new faces and voices will be seen and heard. At times, it will be unpleasant and argumentative. But that's how democracy works and it's required to build the support needed to move the city forward.
"Ought to be" is the only part I believe to be true. I agree with the entire point, but the people who benefited from the old system won't give it up willingly; and they won't believe their world has truly changed. To some degree they are right. Just because the CCC collapsed is not a proof that the old ways don't work. It's easy to explain/rationalize this one away. After all, we are still in a recession. This was a clumsily and poorly executed campaign. They never got one of the major political figures to fully back this. And so on.
Fulwood, for some reason, decides to give the Mayor some backhanded credit for knowing all along this was a loser plan, and finally pulling the plug on it. Almost as if it is a quiet give back for his really fantastic column that showed the world just how shallow and desperate for good publicity Mayor Campbell has become. I mean this column got national attention, after Romensko picked it up, and it really was funny. Probably Fulwood's best column.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Cleveland Convention Center -- The Lost Stories
One of the little side effects of the plug being pulled on the new CCC so suddenly had to be the reaction at the Cleveland Free Times today. The latest issue of the alt-weekly came out with no less than six columns and articles relating to the Convention Center and/or Mayor Jane Campbell's blackout performances.
You know that they had to be gnashing their teeth over the timing. One more day before announcing and they could have deluded themselves and crowed about how they helped bring it down. Now most of it is not even worth reading.
Now What?
Of course the big question my wife has already asked, is what will I write obsessively about now that the CCC is dead for at least a few years, and I moved my Pitt babbling to another site? I don't know, but I'm sure I can count on something to piss me off.
Realistic
I'm not kidding myself to think I had anything to do with derailing this beast. The best I was hoping was that people would go looking for information once the thing got onto the ballot and might find the posts influential.
Cleveland Convention Center -- The Horse Dies at the Gate
Okay, even I didn't see it ending this way.
Mayor Jane Campbell dramatically reversed course yesterday on building a convention center, saying she does not support raising taxes for a new facility.
The move effectively ends the debate over building a multimillion-dollar convention center.
"We really can't expect people to be ready to raise their taxes right now," Campbell said at a City Hall news conference. "I don't think it benefits the community to push something the community does not want to do."
I'm chalking this up to the Blackout of 2003. There was no chance of this happening prior to last Thursday. The fighting between the City and County was going to go down to the wire, but the shift in attention for several days meant that there was no time to finish by tomorrow -- the deadline for getting the tax on the November ballot.
Campbell blamed the public's opposition on the slumping economy and a series of recent tax increases, including a 1 percentage-point rise in the state sales tax, property-tax reappraisals and the countywide health and human services tax.
A poll last month showed that 65 percent of voters opposed a tax increase for a convention center. Several business leaders said yesterday that a new poll showed voter support had eroded further, with at least 75 percent of voters opposing the convention center tax.
Campbell said she had not seen the most recent poll, but she added: "I do not believe the citizens have the appetite for a general sales tax increase."
Sure she hadn't seen the most recent polls. Sure.
Funny but all of those reasons she is now citing, did not stop her from backing the plan for a new CCC earlier. The county commissioners now intend to pull the tax issue that they had previously approved.
Dennis Eckart of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association and Joe Roman, head of Cleveland Tomorrow, were the driving force behind plans to build a new center.
In a joint statement yesterday, the pair laid the blame, in part, at the feet of politicians.
"The difficult economic times, understandable voter skepticism about new taxes and political indecision makes this fall a difficult time for a ballot issue," said Eckart and Roman, who head the county's two leading business groups.
I'd like you to meet the biggest losers of political capital, prestige and influence in this mess.
This was their baby. Their project. They will, deservedly, take a lot of the blame from the business community for blowing this. They ducked, bobbed and avoided any real questions about a new CCC. They came off as pawns of Forest City for their procrastination on picking a site (originally supposed to be in January, then February, then finally in June) and then going with the 11th hour submitted site. Right now, no one wants to take or return their calls.
Soon to come, the fallout and finger pointing as to who's fault it really was. The County Commissioners will say they had approved a plan, and even put it on the ballot. It was the Mayor's fault for pulling out. The Mayor will blame the County Commissioners for acting unilaterally and trying to bankrupt Cleveland because they wouldn't agree to let some of the tax proceeds be used to pay off the city's penalty clauses for the I-X Center.
Almost as if it is to make me happier, the Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board starts the finger pointing.
Public support for a tax increase to build a new convention center evaporated, in part, because public officials made the fatal error of never trying to convince their constituents of the need for such a facility.
Starting from the top. "Evaporated" suggests that there was actually some support by the public to see their taxes raised. It never even reached that point.
Next, the tenuous belief that they never convinced the voters of the need. I believe the public got it -- that there may very well have been a need for a new CCC. What the business leaders, politicians and the local media that shamelessly backed this never convinced the voters of, was whether it was actually worth more taxes to pay for a new CCC.
We have never suggested that, in and of itself, a new convention center is essential to either the region's economic future or the survival of the downtown neighborhood. But the dinosaur that is the city's present convention facility has placed at risk the billions of dollars in public and private investment made in downtown Cleveland during the 10-year period that began in the mid-1980s.
I hate having to clean coffee off of the monitor, but I had to after reading that. I suppose that is technically true. They never explicitly said it in that way, but Brent Larkin (chair of the PDEB) liked to couch it this way: "If they agree a new convention center is essential to downtown's future, that's all the incentive they should need to cut a deal." So, while the PDEB never said it was essential, the politicians should have concluded it to be so.
It's too early in the day, but tonight I'm taking a celebratory drink tonight.
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Time to Reconsider
Canadian Colby Cosh comments on the National Statuary Hall Collection. The NSH is a collection of statutes of famous citizens from each state (max limit 2). The law was changed in 2000 to allow a state to request a change of the statutes. Cosh lambasts one effort.
Looking over the choices Ohio made back in 1886 and 1887, though, I think the change would be good in this instance. Ohio chose James Garfield, "the last American president to be born in a log cabin." Of course Garfield was only President for 8 months after he was shot.
William Allen, though, makes Garfield look like an inspired choice. Allen was a jingoist and coined the classic "54/40 or fight!" in support of the US claims to the Oregon territories, not to mention the annexation of Texas. Of course he changed his tone in later years leading up to the Civil War, "He became an outspoken critic of Lincoln and was an anti-war Democrat."
Fun With Advertising
You know Slate had to put this image out there to guarantee the clicks for this article.
The article is your basic deconstructing a couple ads and exposing their hypocrisy theme. The targets are Heineken and Champion.
Viewing all this from across the way are attendees at another rooftop party -- a real one. It's mellow, with laid-back R & B playing, a little barbecue, a big old dog, and a (suspiciously) multi-culti crew all having the time of their enlightened lives together. Basquiat-like graffiti lends the perfect urban-hipster-sophisticate touch. I mean, there's still a hot girl in a bikini top in the crowd -- but it's not like she's blond or anything.
...
Still, both of these ads use disenchantment to good effect. So what if that Heineken party looks -- and of course is -- every bit as concocted as the one it's looking down on? So what if the Champion ad sneers at logos by touting its own brand? Advertising isn't about a consistent worldview; in this case, it's about catching a mood. Right now the mood happens to be a little testy about certain commercial tactics and trends. So why should an advertiser fight that, when they can simply join in?
The whole article seemed to be done with a resigned who cares predictability: Yeah, they're being hypocrites, but it doesn't matter if it sells.
Of course the question really should be, why even write an article about it?
Monday, August 18, 2003
Missed the Big Media Exposure
I got an e-mail on Saturday from Amy Harmon, a technology reporter from the New York Times, who was "working on a story about how particularly tech-attuned folks are dealing with the first blackout of the digital age."
My first reaction was to laugh. I qualified as a "tech-attuned folk?" Who knew? I don't even have a PDA. Or a Blackberry.
Called her back, and got her voice mail. Left a message and hung up. Then for some reason, I decided to send her an e-mail. In a fit of honesty I wrote that, "I'm not sure how useful I'll be." I then proceeded to explain, that it didn't seem that difficult a period. I mean, I have a young daughter. Guess where most of the time I would have spent watching some TV or being on the computer was spent. I guess, she decided I was write, because she never got back to me.
It looks like I wasn't the only person in Ohio, she contacted, though only George made it into the finished story.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Cleveland Convention Center -- A Blackout to Hide the Disillusionment
Okay, I'm not disillusioned. In fact, if you want, go here for some good back and forth arguing between myself and Chris Thompson on a new CCC. No, the disillusionment seems to be coming from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Metro columnist Sam Fulwood claims that the new CCC will not win its tax passage in November.
I'll cut to the chase: The convention center is history.
Let's move on. Many other pressing issues are going unnoticed as our community leaders waste time debating this loser.
Anyone who has paid attention to the public conversation has known from the beginning that building a convention center in downtown was a nonstarter.
But no one has dared say it out loud. It's as if every political, business and civic leader in the region believes in keeping this impossible fantasy alive.
Well, folks, it's over. Has been for some time. And I didn't call Miss Cleo to learn it.
NO, but it didn't stop you from talking it up a bit last month.
Our elected officials must know they can't make the case with the public. None of them have tried very hard. However, they have studied a secret poll conducted by business leaders. It told them they will lose big in November.
And that's why no one has climbed up on a soapbox to make a convincing public argument for spending hundreds of millions on a new bauble to embellish Cleveland's lackluster image.
But, but, last month you said Cleveland City Council President Frank Jackson was displaying real leadership on the issue? What happened?
In more CCC news (just before the blackout), it seems Cleveland City Council authorized their own package for financing the CCC.
City Council authorized Mayor Jane Campbell to enter an agreement with the Cuyahoga County commissioners on how a proposed center would be governed, and another with Forest City Enterprises on building the center connected to Tower City and housing across the river.
The problem is it differs from the one passed by the Cuyahoga County Commissioners.
The city's agreement will be moot without the commissioners' signatures. And that, in turn, could jeopardize the city's negotiations with Forest City.
The city's agreement spells out how taxes not used on the convention center should be divided - 30 percent to the city of Cleveland, 30 percent to Cuyahoga County's general fund for use by the suburbs, 20 percent to Cuyahoga County's "fund for the future" and 20 percent to the arts community. It also details how panels will be created to decide how to further divide the money among the groups.
Like I've been saying. They're playing a game of chicken.
The PD finally acknowledges (after ignoring it for almost a month) that the existence and problem of the I-X Center and the contract the City of Cleveland signed. The contract, signed in 1999, calls for Cleveland to make penalty payments to the operators of the I-X if a new CCC is built in the city limits. The city wants these penalties (at least $14 million) paid out of the tax revenues. The county doesn't want the money going to it, since it never was a party to the contract. Mayor Campbell is pissed, because she is screwed by former Mayor Mike White's deal for the I-X and the need/desire/pressure for a new CCC. She knows that she can't cut parts of the Cleveland budget to afford the payments for the I-X, and she can't put the city in bankruptcy either.
The blackout just screwed the game of chicken up in a big way. These stories were datelined on Thursday (the PD Website has been down until today), and the ongoing issue of getting power and water back up in the city and county has taken valuable time away from the political players. The real deadline is August 21. That is when the tax issue has to be submitted to the board of elections to be on the November ballot. Tick-tock. Time is running out, and they lost 3-4 days in the game.
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