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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Rebuilding a Mayor
Almost as soon as the Convention Center collapsed, I started wondering about Mayor Jane Campbell's chances at a second term. The spinning and finger- pointing echoed a lot of the same themes.
So now I'm trying to think, what can she do? I'm not talking about public relations stuff. That's easy. Sit down for some real interviews. Be candid and open about the mistakes made on the CCC and the blackout publicity seeking humiliation. Ideally, she should go one on one with Roldo Bartimole for an interview ( get well soon). The hard part in the interview is talking about the coming plans. This is where you could win people back.
So, it's time to think about some of the things the Mayor can push for in Cleveland. Things that people will see as positives and good for the city.
There are obvious constraints. Money being the biggest.
The other is her goal of getting the population of the City of Cleveland back to 500,000 plus within a few years. Now, I think it's kind of dumb, but I'll work with it -- after I mock it. Realistically, about the only way she can get people to move into the city limits in just a few short years to the level she seeks is to either a) annex one of the municipalities bordering Cleveland; or b) have buses waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border and at immigration centers on the coasts to relocate the new arrivals to Cleveland (yeah, just try and get the mental image of a convoy of Cleveland Browns colored buses wheeling into the city with immigrants for the rest of the day).
Here's the problem with her goal. It's too vague. To get people to live within the city limits, there has to be an incentive. Right now there isn't one. Families don't want to live in the city if at all possible because they don't want their kids in the Cleveland school system. Just attracting single people to live in the limits is a short-term fix at best. There is no simple, magic bullet answer here.
I'll list some ideas and the reasons for them soon. In the meantime. Any suggestions or thoughts would be appreciated.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Interesting, but Wrong
Matt Hayes is one of my favorite sports columnists. He covers college football for The Sporting News, and his weekly "Pickin' and Grinnin'" columns during the season are must reads. This column, though, just plain misses the mark. It's a somewhat defense of the present have/have not system of college football and the BCS. Well, it's not so much a defense as a caution of how things could be made worse.
Here's what is happening. There are BCS and non-BCS schools. The BCS schools are schools in major conferences that have an automatic bid to the lucrative Bowl Championship Series. They are a slight majority of the 117 Division I-A football programs. The non-BCS schools are seeing themselves minimized and excluded from the BCS (read: money). You can see where this is leading -- mostly pious, self-righteous posturing.
The non-BCS schools have wrapped themselves in the noble sounding group, the Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform (PCAR). It is headed up by Tulane University President Scott Cowen (Tulane narrowly averted giving up it's football program because of the costs this year).
Both sides have highly educated, well-connected members. This being America, and involving money, university institutions and football (and alumni pride) -- well members of Congress are getting involved. On September 4, the House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on how all of this works.
Hayes warns that could cause a seismic change in the landscape of college football, but not in the way the PCAR wants.
Here's another way to look at it: The more the have-nots push, the more they lose. And the ramifications could change the face of college athletics profoundly.
"If they continue on this course and Congress gets further into this," one prominent BCS source says, "at some point, we have to draw a line in the sand."
That line could end the NCAA as we know it. The sport's governing body has no real power over the universities other than to police their practices, which is why it has been conspicuously silent in this offseason of turmoil. What now is being discussed quietly among BCS athletic directors and conference commissioners is the top 50 to 60 teams in college football breaking away from the NCAA and forming their own league, forcing the rest of college athletics into the ice age. Don't think it can't happen. When money is the mitigating factor, there are no rules and no reason.
The have-nots want greater access to the multimillion-dollar BCS system and are hoping to build a case with antitrust laws, saying the system has monopolized the postseason because no non-BCS team has played in a BCS bowl since its inception in 1998. Now, the BCS schools don't want to break away, don't want the headache of forming a new governing body and dealing with logistical nightmares in other sports, particularly men's basketball and its highly successful tournament. The have-nots know this, but their case gets stronger in the public eye when Congress is debating it live on C-SPAN.
The first thing, and Hayes knows this, is this isn't BCS schools versus non-BCS schools. It is BCS Conferences versus non-BCS Conferences. A small but important difference, I will expand on later.
I won't say, no way that this break-up would happen, but it is a little too far-fetched. The BCS conferences need the NCAA to confer the legitimacy and illusion of the student-athlete, no matter how hypocritical, eye-ball rolling inducing, snickering causing that phrase evokes in people. Breaking away solely for the money strips away their last argument against paying college athletes. They would be leaving themselves open to new litigation, problems and costs. Since Hayes is talking about unintended consequences, he should also consider the ones the BCS conferences would be facing.
As for the top schools leaving, does this mean the Big XII abandons Baylor? The ACC lets Duke go? The SEC, Vandy and Kentucky? No. Of course not. So you will still have programs that only serve to suck money from the better programs (and in Duke and Vandy's case help make the Conference's academic ranking of student athletes look better).
The small-school presidents want a national playoff modeled after the basketball tournament. But that tournament works because the competitive gap can be squeezed when a school has a dominant player. One such player means next to nothing in college football. Consider this: Four years ago in the NCAA Tournament, Wally Szczerbiak carried Miami (Ohio) to the Sweet 16 and scored 43 of the RedHawks' 59 points in a win over Washington. Ben Roethlisberger, the RedHawks' current quarterback and a potential No. 1 pick in next year's NFL draft, faces a huge task to get his team's offense to score at all in Miami's season opener at Iowa.
Whether we want to admit it, there are certain teams that can't cut it in I-A football. That's why the NCAA recently set up Division I eligibility requirements to weed out those who don't belong. Yet these are the same teams the non-BCS presidents believe deserve access to the more than $500 million in annual income the BCS conferences are paid. In their dream, each conference champion would earn a spot in the tournament, and No. 16 seed Middle Tennessee could lose to No. 1 seed Oklahoma by 50 and still pick up a couple million for its troubles.
By focusing on the fantasy, extreme version of a playoff, Hayes makes the whole thing look ridiculous. That plan wouldn't happen. Just because that is the system in Division I-AA and II and III, doesn't mean the BCS Conferences would go with agree to it. Obviously, there would be a compromise.
AS for admitting some teams can't cut it in Div. I-A football, no question. So what. There are teams that don't belong in BCS Conferences -- Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Duke, Baylor, Indiana -- but because they are in the BCS conferences, they always have a potential to get better and get a chunk of the BCS money. Kansas State went from bottom dwelling, joke team to perennial BCS/Big XII potential in 10 years. In part, because they play in a national, BCS conference.
Understand this: Television drives the BCS deal, and advertisers drive the BCS. Advertisers don't want to shell out huge chunks of money for Oklahoma's jamboree against North Texas. And ABC doesn't want to show Tulane vs. Tennessee in a BCS bowl; it wants Tennessee vs. Southern California. Those who direct the deal and pay the bill want major teams or major television markets -- preferably a combination of both -- in those four games.
The BCS conferences have the product, and they're selling it to the highest bidder. That's free enterprise, not a violation of antitrust law, which is defined as a group monopolizing trade or commerce through unreasonable methods. This is a waste of taxpayer money by a group of university presidents who are upset because the mean men at the BCS won't let them play with their ball.
Actually, there is a plausible antitrust argument. Just because "free enterprise" is involved, doesn't mean antitrust activity doesn't occur. Ever hear of Microsoft?
They are freezing out any other competition. Tulane, Toledo and Marshall could be as good as any team in a BCS Conference in a given year, but they wouldn't be allowed to prove it, because they aren't allowed to compete. The system, as set up keeps them from getting the shot. If a mid-major school gets better, the bigger schools won't play them and risk a loss. This keeps the mid-major's strength of schedule down, so they can't get high enough in the calculations to qualify for the "at-large" BCS bid. I won't disagree that it's a waste of taxpayer money, but you could say that about most of the hearings Congress holds.
My personal views are on the fence over the whole thing. In part because Pitt is in a weird limbo at the moment. They are in the BCS right now, but there is a chance (maybe 25%) that they could be locked out in a couple years. Even the chance that could happen chills me.
Reckless
With the Cleveland Convention Center dead, City Council and Mayor Campbell can get back to fighting each other.
Mayor Jane Campbell wants to spend more than $27 million on road and bridge repairs, but she'll first have to find a way to fix the city's sidewalks.
City Council recently blocked the sale of bonds for the mayor's road-repair wish list, saying it first wanted a plan to improve the city's sidewalks and curbs. Council members have been frustrated for years about the lack of attention to sidewalks.
The city now has no sidewalk repair program, but is looking for ways to pay for such a program, Finance Director Robert Baker told members of council's Finance Committee during a recent meeting.
No plan or program to repair sidewalks?
Unbelieveable. This is something that has to be laid at the feet of City Council. You can also blame former Mayor Mike White, if you want, but I have a hard time blaming a Mayor who has been on the job less than 2 years for the city not having this program.
The inability to walk places in the Cleveland area has always been a sticking point to me. It isn't just the city, it's all of Cuyahoga County. This is a city where you always have to drive.
I feel somewhat torn here. Fixing the sidewalks and help improve them is very necessary, and I understand that for City Council to get this, they have to hold up one of the Mayor's projects
But...
Not this one. This is a major public safety issue. If you drive through downtown Cleveland, especially the part of I-90 with all the overpasses, you know that the bridges are crumbling. Literally. The bridges and overpasses are in such bad shape. Right now, they just try and patch the worst overpasses on the weekends to keep them from showering much crumbling stone on I-90. There is some major reconstruction needed soon. Holding this up, puts lives at stake. I really believe that someone will die in the next couple years from a chunk of an overpass falling onto the road or even a moving vehicle.
Residents fighting to keep their homes from being taken by the City of Lakewood, by declaring them "blighted" under eminent domain law, managed to get the issue on the ballot after their city council had already approved the deal. Well, the residents fighting this, have actually managed to get 2 additional ballot issues covering this deal on the ballot. Why? Because, they realized the wording of the first issue meant that Lakewood could just negotiate a new deal to replace the thrown out deal. One of the ballot initiatives is to adopt a charter amendment to require voter approval of big projects. Naturally, Lakewood officials and the law director are doing everything they can to get this issue off the ballot:
The latest petitions are "a knucklehead idea," said Council President Bob Seelie, who supports the West End project. Law Director Kevin Spellacy said the petitions are meant to confuse voters and may not be legal. That could keep them off the ballot.
...
The proposal would displace more than 50 homeowners, several businesses and more than 500 apartments in a neighborhood near Detroit Avenue and Riverside Drive. The city has declared the neighborhood blighted. Council and the city agreed to use the power of eminent domain to buy land for the private developers from owners unwilling to sell.
Spellacy, who initially challenged technical points on the first petition drive, said yesterday that he had not determined whether the second and third sets of petitions met requirements of Ohio law and the city charter.
"They have attempted to confuse the issue," he said.
Seelie said future development in Lakewood will be thwarted if voters adopt a charter amendment to require voter approval of big projects.
I think that's the point.
Lakewood officials are so blatant in trying to avoid getting this out in the public, it is almost comical. I'm hopeful for the residents of the City of Lakewood. The Mayor and City Council there are abusing the power of eminent domain, and now risk having it taken from them if that charter amendment gets passed.
Now, If Only That Could be Translated Into Quality
The two local alt-weeklies are really starting to get nasty:
Two employees of Cleveland Scene's advertising department threatened a former co-worker who now works for the competing weekly newspaper Free Times, Westlake police said.
Scene's retail advertising director, Adam Simon, 31, and account manager Brian LeBlanc, 32, surrendered to police Monday. They face charges of aggravated menacing, telecommunications harassment and making threats over the telephone. Each charge is a first-degree misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Both were released on personal bond.
Westlake Police Capt. Guy Turner said Simon and LeBlanc left a threatening voicemail July 11 on the phone of the Free Times' Kevin Flanigan, 30, who was at his home in Westlake. The voicemail was anonymous, but Flanigan's phone was equipped with Caller ID.
When he called the number back, Turner said, both he and his wife were threatened again.
Since the Free Times closed then re-opened, they and Scene have been taking almost weekly cheap shots at each other. Unfortunately, the quality of the stories haven't been that good.
Fun to watch, though. The editors hate each other. They both are looking to put this in the best light for their side.
Scene Editor Pete Kotz said the threats resulted from "a beef that goes way back."
He added that Simon and LeBlanc had been out drinking when they came up with the bad idea to call Flanigan.
"It was just guys getting hammered and trash-talking over the phone," said Kotz. "They were jawboning. Flanigan was giving it as good as he got."
Free Times Editor David Eden said thatthe paper is taking the threats seriously.
"This was not a schoolyard prank," Eden said. "They threatened to kill [Flanigan] and rape his wife."
LeBlanc was convicted of assault in 1996, records show. That makes such a threat even more serious, said Eden.
Have I mentioned that the editors hate each other?
Soon after, Kotz confronted Eden at a conference in Pittsburgh, challenging him to a fistfight because he said Eden had been "lying" about the deal in print. Kotz maintains he is right and is unapologetic about the incident.
Eden said it's proof that violence toward the competition is condoned at Scene.
I guess it won't make the issue that comes out today, but I look forward to next week.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Should I worry?
I was flicking around the dial yesterday afternoon, hoping to find something decent to watch. I flipped over ESPN, where they had the College Dance Team Championships on rebroadcast. I lingered. My daughter got very happy and started clapping when the dance teams were performing. I mean, sure the wife's alma mater was one of the finalist teams, but I was a little concerned to see her so happy about glorified cheerleaders.
Cleveland Class
Well, technically it was out in Lorain; but close enough.
Four Browns fans beat up a Pittsburgh Steelers fan early Sunday morning at a bar, police say.
Jeffrey Michael Saltis, 32, was bleeding from his head, nose and mouth when he flagged down police about 1:30 a.m. outside the Charleston Club on Broadway Avenue, according to a report.
He was treated at Community Health Partners Hospital.
Saltis told police that before the attack he was talking about Browns and Steelers football with four men. As the evening progressed, Saltis told the bar patrons that his allegiance was to the Steelers.
One of the Browns fans threw a beer bottle at Saltis with such force that it knocked Saltis back against the bar, the report said.
Saltis said the men charged him, held him down against the bar and punched him in the face.
After the attackers released Saltis, they left through the back door, according to the report.
Ooooh. 4 on 1. Way to go Browns fans. Your team sucks on the field, so you take it out on fans of a team that can win and hasn't been rebooted.
I'm Feeling Kind of NIMBY
Great. Just great. More waste from New Jersey ends up in Ohio.
A student group supporting Palestinian rights decided yesterday to move its national conference to Ohio State University after controversy erupted in New Jersey about holding the meeting at Rutgers University, said a group spokeswoman.
The three-day conference, tentatively scheduled for November, is sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is made up of student groups from universities across the United States and Canada.
One goal of the group is to get universities to stop investing in companies that do business in Israel. Some Jewish groups have argued that the movement promotes anti-Semitic views, in part because its leaders refuse to denounce terrorism.
The group's mission statement "rejects any form of hatred or discrimination against any group." But it adds, in part, "It is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation."
That's a hell of a qualifier.
Here are some of their other "goals" for the convention (info via Yourish, who did not want it in her home state either.)
Among the 2003 Convention's main achievements are the following:
* Putting the world on notice that the struggle for the right of return is alive and well
* Providing activists from North America, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan with the space to network and plan future projects in support of the right of return
* Recruiting new activists and establishing a new chapter in Montreal, Canada
* Paving the way for partnering with the Palestine Solidarity Group in South Africa with the purpose of convening a conference next Winter in Johannesburg aimed at isolating the Zionist entity ion the international arena
* Discussing with Abnaa' el-Balad's representative from 48 Palestine the possibility of establishing "Know you Homeland" project
* Establishing mechanisms for better coordination with right of return activists in Lebanon and Palestine
And if you think these are moderate souls, check out their resolutions:
Resolution 2
Al-Awda 2003 Convention opposes the US sponsored Road Map, which aims at suppressing the human and national rights of the Palestinian people. The Convention expresses support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, currently spearheaded by the Intifada, to achieve national resistance goals including, but not limited to, ending Zionist colonization, implementing the right of return, and achieving self-determination. Al-Awda Convention does not recognize any self-proclaimed Palestinian leadership, elected or appointed, in compromising any Palestinian national rights, especially the right of return.
Resolution 3
Al-Awda 2003 Convention demands the immediate termination of the use of the term "Israel/Palestine", and any of its combinations, in all and any Al-Awda related documents.
There is clearly room to negotiate.
Among their leadership is the rational and reasonable Charlotte Kates.
What may one call a state created from colonized land, stolen from its native inhabitants and turned over to European invaders through a process of militarily-enforced ethnic cleansing and occupation? While one may call it "the United States," one may also call it "Israel"--but one certainly cannot, and should not call it a "democratically-created state."
...
While Jews had always lived alongside Muslims and Christians in historic Palestine, they were Palestinian Jews; the Zionists' essential identification and role was not their religious affiliation but rather their political organization as a European settler colonialist movement, seeking the dispossession of Palestinians and the expropriation of their land. Following World War II, a "Partition Plan" was proposed and adopted by the United Nations; without consultation with the Palestinians who lived in Palestine, Palestine was to be divided into two states--a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state." Unsurprisingly, the Palestinian people resisted this new imperialist attack; there was no compelling reason to accept the splitting and expropriation of large amounts of Palestinian land for no other reason than the decision of European powers and European settlers. Confronted with the Palestinian people's desire to retain their land and independence, the Zionist forces waged an armed onslaught. Contrary to common accounts of the 1948 war, the "Arab armies" entered not the territory granted to the "Jewish state" in the partition plan, but only that designated as "Arab land"--the Zionist army was equally determined to reject partition as proposed, as it failed to satisfy dreams of a Greater Israel.
You hate to even bother to respond to such blatant lies, but reality and truth needs to be maintained.
They could have stayed in NJ and held it at Rutgers as originally intended. The Governor there, only disagreed with them. He didn't stop them.
Well classes should be underway at Ohio State any day now. Hopefully their student paper will notice. Maybe. If they can get past the issue of pregame drinking. Let me put in a way that will really get the OSU kids charged against this. They have held this sort of conference at the University of Michigan. What? Are you people just copying Ann Arbor?
Monday, August 25, 2003
Piling On
Now that the Cleveland Convention Center tax monstrosity has been dead and buried a week, everyone is piling on and pissing on the carcass. Crain's Cleveland Business takes its shot on the editorial page (subs. req'd)
Strange as it may sound, we're relieved Mayor Jane Campbell bailed out last Tuesday on supporting a tax hike for a new downtown convention center. We, too, couldn't back the countywide tax increase, but for an entirely different reason - the proposed quarter-point hike in the sales tax wasn't about the convention center at all, but rather was an attempted money grab by public officials who were drooling over the hundreds of millions of dollars that the tax also would have provided for unspecified economic development projects in the city and suburbs.
Um, yeah. Sorry if I'm a little skeptical. It's nice to say now, but dollars to donuts says, they still would have supported the tax because they would have rationalized it by saying at least there will be a new CCC.
Yes, we do, although the ballpark and arena complex only came about because former Mayor Mike White and former County Commissioner Tim Hagan resolved in 1990 to lead the charge for an unpopular tax on tobacco and alcohol to finance the Gateway project. They weren't afraid to use their powers of persuasion to convince enough voters that Gateway was a good thing. It will take that type of political courage to make a convention center happen, too.
No it will take a powerful enough political figure being convinced (or bought) that they will not be committing political suicide on the project. The rock hall, Browns Stadium, Gateway all had something that could be put to the public as having at least some personal value/pride. I won't buy an economic argument for any of those, but I can except a civic pride line of reasoning as being more honest and having a legitimate value. A Convention Center doesn't have that cache.
There was also an article on business leaders continuing to make new plans for a new CCC.
Using hotel bed taxes for the brunt of its cost, building a less-ambitious convention center and renewing a push for state money are among the ideas floated to make it happen after last week's decision by Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell not to back a countywide sales tax hike that would have financed the project. A vote on the tax increase was slated by the Cuyahoga County commissioners for Nov. 4, but has been withdrawn.
"The political leadership would like to see (the convention center issue) go away. I don't think we can let it go away," said John Carney, chairman of the property owners' committee of Downtown Cleveland Partnership and a downtown real estate developer.
...
"We need to better educate the public on the need for a convention center," Mr. Roman said. "If we can do that, a lot of other things fall into place."
Some ideas for reviving the project are financial. With revenues from a two percentage point increase in the bed tax and redirected bed tax revenue from the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, "we could be back in the convention center business," Mr. Eckart said.
Taking a different tack, Cuyahoga County Commissioner Timothy McCormack said the county's public officials need to make a stronger case in Columbus for state aid for a Cleveland convention center. It's a notion seconded by Commissioner Jimmy Dimora.
In particular, Messrs. McCormack and Dimora say they want to renew a push for directing toward a convention center 5% of the state sales tax levied on hotel rooms in Cuyahoga County. State money woes and Ohio's Republican leadership rebuffing county Democrats might make that gambit unlikely to succeed, but Mr. McCormack said the county was too low-key the last time it approached the state.
Let's see, if they actually risked educating the public on the need, then they might ask even more dangerous questions. And the one thing you can take away from the way business and political leadership handled the most recent public questions is to avoid saying much of substance.
The lack of state money is one of the reasons they kept their mouths shut about the actual financing and costs. This project was to get no state money. Something unbelievable given the size and the claims for the amount of tax revenue it would generate for the state.
The other idea Mr. Eckart advances is building a convention center of 200,000 square feet that could be expanded later on the anointed site behind Tower City Center. That approach might be less costly than the $400 million proposal for a 350,000-square-foot building on the site.
Such details stir debate, even among the like-minded. Mr. Roman said four years of study went into deciding the city needs a 350,000-square-foot center to compete with nearby convention rivals such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh.
Good idea. Stick with the location that keeps it isolated and will have lots of hidden costs when you actually try to build it. There is something to be said about knowing when to give up on something.
Stop Me if You've Heard This Before
Here's the start of a story.
I can't tell you the number of times I've heard or run across some version of this pitch: The travel and tourism industry is the second- (or third-) largest industry in [State X], and has the potential of replacing some of the jobs we're losing in other sectors. It's clean, fast-growing, and progressive. If only government will step in with the right assistance, the tourism industry holds the key to our economic future.
Another chance for me to take a shot at Cleveland and/or Ohio? No. State X and the article is really about North Carolina (via Hit & Run).
It goes on:
Long ago, I realized that wherever you go in the United States, you will hear pretty much the same spiel from politicians, industry reps, and gullible media folks. It turns out that the way the "travel and tourism" industry is defined, it encompasses such a large number of disparate businesses and industries — from hotels and convention business to sports, entertainment, movies, restaurants, and transportation — that there is virtually no state in the union in which it does not constitute "one of the largest industries."
For years, we've sort of made it a joke at the Locke Foundation to locate the silliest version of the "tourism will save us" story. But it's starting to lose its ability to amuse.
I've just read a story today that has taken the claim to its most absurd degree. "With travel and tourism recognized as the largest industry in the state — generating some $12 billion in annual revenue and creating more than 200,000 jobs — the General Assembly is being more hospitable to its needs," began a piece in last weekend's Charlotte Business Journal about a bill that has passed the N.C. House, but thankfully not yet the Senate, to aid local projects that promise to attract travel and tourism. Originally intended to help Charlotte build an NBA arena for the new Charlotte Bobcats, the legislature was expanded by lawmakers in Raleigh to encompass a wide variety of costly boondoggles -- I mean, wise investments in our future.
Let me help prove the point. In Tower City -- the downtown shopping area owned by Forest City, and where the Greater Cleveland Visitors & Convention Bureau is located -- there is a sign that reads:
9 million leisure visitors to Cleveland*
67,470 Jobs Sustained by the Travel & Tourism Industry**
In very small print near the bottom you see:
* 2001 Study conducted by D.K. Shifflet & Assoc.
** Ohio Travel & Tourism Economic Impact Study conducted by Longwoods International 2001
Here are the stats from the GCVCB site. I couldn't locate the 2001 Longwoods study, but here is the "Fact Sheet" for all of Ohio for 2001, that attributes the equivalent of 552,000 full-time jobs directly to the travel & tourism industry. Of course no one really knows what that means here or in North Carolina
I've looked in vain for a sound economic analysis of travel and tourism in the various states. To conduct such a study, you would have to back out all the expenditures that industry boosters and flawed government datasets include under "travel and tourism" that have little to do with out-of-town or out-of-state visitors. For example, it is silly to include restaurants and movie theaters in the mix without a massive discounting. When my wife and I visit the local Indian eatery and then take in a film at the multiplex, we are, I guess, traveling through Southern Wake County and touring various interesting parking lots of the same. But this activity is far removed from the "Hi, we're the Petersons from Chicago, and we're looking for that museum we've heard so much about" picture that most of us would associate with a vibrant tourism industry.
In the absence of a comprehensive study of this, I did do some checking in the database of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It provides data on gross domestic product and gross state product by industry. I figured that if anything can reasonably be associated with out-of-state tourism -- though not solely with tourism -- it would be the BEA category for "hotel and other lodging." In 2001, hotel/lodging expenditures constituted about .87 percent of the gross domestic product of the U.S. The nature of a national average, of course, is that some states are above and some below. South Carolina (.97 percent of gross state product) and Tennessee (.93 percent) are higher than average in hotel spending. Georgia (.76 percent) and Virginia (.70 percent) are below average. And where does our state, where tourism is now the number-one industry, come out? The lowest in the region, at .53 percent.
...
Of course, this won't silence the politicians. They'll just say that our state obviously needs more government aid to build a more significant tourism industry.
Man, does this sound familiar.
Cleveland Convention Center -- It Was All Leadership Problems
Did I say trickle? A veritable torrent of criticisms on the CCC getting killed from the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer. All of it blaming it on "leadership." Three Columns, an editorial, and a piece on the Greater Cleveland Visitors and Convention Bureau's changes in leadership.
Dick "by gum, in the old days..." Feagler can start this off, with his complaints of the present leaders of Cleveland compared to the visionaries in -- 1922? Eighty flippin' years ago? Man, and I thought the old-timers in Pittsburgh who talked of great political leadership in the 1950s were having distorted visions?
Way back in 1922, the civic leaders who built the Public Auditorium were visionaries. The current crop of leaders traded vision for hallucination. There's a difference between the two, and the taxpayers know it.
In 1922, Cleveland was the sixth- largest city in the nation. If you travel in the old neighborhoods, you can still see faded signs on the sides of old buildings that say things like "Sixth City Ice Co." We were big back then. We were in the major league of convention towns.
Now we're in the minors. When the Public Auditorium was built, Las Vegas wasn't even a dream in a mobster's eye. Miami had barely crawled out of the swamp. Phoenix was a dry place they sent you to if you had TB. There was no such thing as the sun belt. There was no such thing as the rust belt, either.
Back then, Cleveland was called an "industrial giant." Our blast furnaces glowed like lanterns and lit the way for thousands of our citizens looking for jobs. Good jobs. Sweat-equity jobs. You worked in the scorching mills all day and came home bone-tired at night. But you made enough to feed your family.
Everytime I read that, I just get the giggles. There is so much that is pathetically ridiculous with that passage that it is barely worth detailing. Okay just one, the first paragraph how the taxpayers know the difference between leaders now versus back in 1922. No. No, they do not. The vast majority of people weren't alive in 1922, let alone old enough to have jobs. Just because you may remember the '20s with some fondness, Dick. The rest of us may have slightly different views.
Some of the only criticism of the CCC in the Plain Dealer emanated from the "arts" section, specifically the architectural critic, Steven Litt. Litt actually is a fan of these big projects -- of course he is, he's an architectural critic. If you don't build big projects, all he has to talk about are old buildings and the latest development housing designs. He needs these things Litt too, does a commentary in the "Sunday Arts" Section on the lack of leadership. He actually gives Mayor Campbell leadership points for killing the CCC, and says she looked decisive in the decision. (I do not understand this need by PD columnists to do this. Say something nice before bitching about the rest. Just skip that part. It's a waste.) Then he gets to the point
But it shouldn't be forgotten that by not taking charge of the project early on, Campbell played a big role, perhaps the decisive one, in ensuring its failure. She set up a lousy planning process that produced an ugly and potentially costly design concept whose functionality was never proven, making the whole project hard to swallow.
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The convention-center project got off to a terrible start last January. That's when Campbell asked leaders from Cleveland Tomorrow and the Greater Cleveland Growth Association to recommend a site for a new facility to replace the aging, outmoded convention hall underneath the Mall in downtown Cleveland.
The business groups wanted the new convention center badly, but Campbell apparently did not. By punting the selection of a site to business leaders, she sent a message of ambivalence that certainly contributed to the project's demise.
She also departed sharply from the public-spirited planning process she has championed for the city's lakefront.
The business organizations did themselves no favors by running a site-selection process largely closed to the public, holding only a few public meetings before tossing their so-called "recommendation," actually more of a fait accompli, to the city late in the game.
When the business groups finally recommended in June that the new convention center be built on the Cuyahoga River behind Tower City Center, there was scant time for public participation before an August deadline to put a bond issue on the ballot for November.
Okay, he is basically repeating a lot of what I have been writing since I picked up the CCC story, but he's been the only PD columnist to do any real critical writing about how the CCC has been a screwed up thing from the start -- and it bares repeating -- the friggin' architectural critic in the "arts" section is doing this. Not the political or the metro columnists. This is the clearest reason I can give for why I don't think highly of the Plain Dealer.
Ultimately, the convention center failed because this was not the ideal time for a bond issue, despite claims to the contrary made repeatedly this year by Cleveland Tomorrow Executive Director Joe Roman.
True, interest rates remain relatively low. But the economy is weak and local taxes are rising. Given those facts, Campbell's decision to withdraw makes sense. It also helps her avoid embarrassment at the polls in November.
So what's to be learned?
Next time, the city shouldn't outsource the planning of a convention center. The site should be chosen in a fair, open process. Ditto for architectural design.
Planning is a civic function, not a private one. By all means, business leaders should be involved. But the process should be transparent, and accountability should rest with elected officials from the start. No more planning at arm's length.
If there is to be a new convention center, the decision to build one should be based on solid, up-to-date economic projections, not the dusty, pre-Sept. 11 studies the city and county relied upon this time around.
And, he's the only columnist to actually observe that the economic studies they used are relying on old data.
The editorial was a bit of face saving recap. Sure the thing failed. It crashed and burned, and made many look stupid, but let's look at the positives: now everyone knows that the hopitality industry in Cleveland is a subsidized mess; the arts and culture community in the city may actually provide some new political juice; a better job has to be done selling the city; the CVB needs a complete overhaul; and maybe, just maybe we should have these plans made public for debate and discussion rather than just "sold" to the voters after they are decided.
Then there is the story on how the GCVCB is working under the cloud of being folded into a new authority, leadership transition and audits. It's rather substance free, and still doesn't mention that Dave Nolan is not coming back.
Finally, a special treat. The Plain Dealer Editorial Board Director, Brent Larkin, ventures from behind the anonymity of the unsigned editorials to give us one of his quarterly pieces. Is Mayor Campbell gone after only one term?. He points out that Cleveland, with the noticeable exception of Dennis Kucinich, tends to give mayors at least 2 terms. Most of the rest of the piece is very familiar. Essentially, because I wrote some of the same arguments a few days before. Larkin can name more potential foes and local history than I can, but he doesn't bring anything new.
Corporate leaders are impatient.
Some already have sent signals to City Hall that the region's problems are so staggering that political caution is unacceptable.
Implicit in those polite warnings is a threat to stop or slow the flow of corporate cash into Campbell's campaign coffers.
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This means that though Campbell remains a formidable political figure, she may be well on her way to buying herself a difficult re-election campaign.
That conclusion was arrived at long before the mayor pulled the plug last week on the convention center tax proposal - an act that heightened frustrations within Cleveland's civic and corporate leadership even as it may have relieved a tax-weary electorate.
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Campbell rode the fence during the convention center debate, neither actively promoting nor opposing it. If she thought the timing was inappropriate or the cost prohibitive, she should have scuttled the idea early on. Instead, she waited until the 11th hour to stop the process, a wait that only served to underscore her passive leadership style.
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Now, it's no longer a whisper. It's an established part of the city's underground vocabulary. Worse yet for Campbell, those same words may now be heard coming from the mouths of some everyday Clevelanders.
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Campbell's smiles and civility, along with the fact that she took over a city whose finances were in disarray, bought her a long honeymoon. But she squandered part of that honeymoon assembling a team that has too many mediocre players and too few stars. Campbell is no rookie. She should know that a mediocre mayoral team almost guarantees a mediocre mayoral record.
For Campbell, the defining moment of her second year as mayor was to be her State of the City Speech in February. It was then, supporters boasted beforehand, that she would lay out her vision for Cleveland.
Well, the vision turned out to be a visual - a bunch of boxes and other mumbo jumbo crammed onto color-coded charts that left heads spinning and shaking. The centerpiece was the Cleveland 500,000+ Committee, the group charged with repopulating the city.
I can only conclude one of several possibilities:
1) Larkin's cribbing my notes.
2) He's real lazy, just writing stuff anyone can and should be able to see, rather than really think.
3) He's not that smart and insightful, for the PDEB Director and the paper's connected insider/man on the know of local politics.
If it seems harsh, it should be. He was silent once the CCC debate actually began, hiding behind the unsigned editorials of the PD. He has offered no useful comments or criticisms before or during, only cheerleading without substance, that he later complains of in others to be lacking in the public debate. He wrote nothing new, that most people have figured out, except to provide a list of some potential opponents. It was a weak, space occupying column.
Positive News
Thanks to everyone for their kind words in comments and e-mails, in what, ultimately was only a minor blip. The crisis with Angie seems to have passed. Friday I spoke with the doctor about her blood tests. They all came back negative -- ruling out any rheumatoid or possible tumors. The only thing not completely normal with the blood tests was a slightly elevated white blood cell count (suggesting that she had been fighting off an infection). The doctor felt more confident than before that it is "only" toxic synovitis.
Even better news happened Friday night. Angie started standing again. She was clearly favoring her right side, but was definitely putting weight on her left. It was like watching her learning to stand and take steps again. A rewind back four months. Saturday, she was standing and walking and putting even more weight on the leg. By Sunday, I was chasing her around the yard, and she was acting like there was never a problem. She is still slightly favoring the right side, but you have to be looking for it.
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