We don’t have a medical mart or a new convention center but we’re paying top dollar for it anyway.

The quarter-percent sales tax passed by Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora without a public vote now totals $35,233,319.51 as of the end of October, according to County Auditor’s records.

So that’s just $35 million hanging around in the Hagan-Dimora kitty fund. No wonder the boys could pass up on the $500,000 check from K & D developers on the E. 9th building that continues to sit unoccupied and corroding.

Public and civic leaders talk a lot about Regionalization but the public institutions that provide venues for people in the Northeast Ohio area are all paid for by Cleveland and Cuyahoga County taxpayers.

The Region is absent when it comes to paying for its luxuries.

Those outside the city and county boundaries can enjoy sports, art and cultural events in the city but they don’t have to pay the taxes that support these activities.

This is about as unfair as the tea tax that helped start the American Revolution.

City and/or county residents are paying for an absent medical mart and convention center, a pro football stadium and a host of arts and cultural events enjoyed by everyone to say nothing of Gateway.

County Commissioner Tim Hagan – the supposed friend of labor – is moving to privatize the the construction and operation of the proposed convention center. Little - if anything - is being said about this Republican-style move that damages unionized labor.

Tax money will finance a privatized business that now operated by city employees at the city-owned Convention Center. Hagan provided the taxes by voting - without public input - a quarter percent increase in the County sales tax, jumping it to 7.75 percent, the highest in the state.

The move to put the public facility into private hands has had little public discussion. No surprise there.

The privatization of the convention center business has built-in conflicts of interests that could enrich political friends and contributors but the scheme is being ignored by the public and the Plain Dealer. Of course, of course.

The first incident of built-in conflict in the deal between Cuyahoga County and MMPI (Merchandise Mart Properties) to operate the Medical Mart and Convention center already took place when a high county official moved from the County payroll to MMPI’s payroll.

Dennis Madden moved from the Cuyahoga County Administrator post to MMPI, not yet even contracted to run the county’s proposed new facility.

Cleveland has an overabundance of institutions – from sports to the arts to foundations to establishments of all kinds. We are an institutionally heavy community, the legacy of a wealthy past.

The problem with the blessing of having all these establishments is that they must be fed. The feeding comes from public monies from the local, county, state, federal, and from private funds, all could be used for other needs.

So they sometimes become, instead of assets, burdens to the public.

And we keep adding to the burdens. They’re getting heavier and heavier, especially at the local level.

The latest, of course, is the increase of a quarter percent in the sales tax levied without public input by the County Commissioners for the proposed medical mart and convention center.

Before that it was the creation by vote of a new cigarette tax for the arts.

The question is when do we go over the line in taxing? I believe we passed that line long ago.

Here’s what cigarette smokers in Cuyahoga County alone face.

They have paid $80,358,035.32 in just cigarette taxes for Gateway. Yes, that’s $80 MILLION not counting taxes for alcoholic beverages and not county the sales tax on the total.

They have paid thus far $9,157,105.66 for Browns Stadium, as of the end of last month. The tax started in August, 2005

Are we dealing in plain old political trickery or something a lot more sinister?

There should be a Federal grand jury to examine just how the County Commissioners came to buy the decaying Ameritrust Bank block (Euclid Avenue, East 9th Street and Prospect Avenue) from Dick Jacobs for a new central administrative headquarters, then decided the effort was beyond the County’s financial means, and finally turned it over to a single bidder who now wants to borrow from the County about half its bid price of some $35 million.

That’s the long way of saying something stinks real bad here.

The bid by K&D Group from the beginning struck me as a backroom deal made with at least two County Commissioners – Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora – to help them save face on a smelly deal that could have significant financial damage to Cuyahoga County and its taxpayers.

The K&D bid - $500 over the minimum sought by the County – always had the taint of a bid to cover the embarrassment of Hagan and Dimora bailing out Jacobs, a favored downtown developer. The properties had been left empty and abandoned for more than a decade by Jacobs. K&D, proposing other developments in the area, would naturally be seeking favor with the Commissioners, a fount of public subsidies and favors. Thus the bid that appears a counterfeit.

Sometimes the Pee Dee is so laughable that you just can’t believe the ridiculousness of it.

I certainly got that feeling by turning to the Sunday Opinion pages and viewing the paper’s endorsement of Joe Cimperman in the 10th District Congressional election.

There certainly was no surprise in the choice. The paper had been telegraphing its desire to flak for Cimperman for weeks.

The Pee Dee used the entire space of the Sunday editorial slot to bless Cimperman. Actually, it was not so much to anoint Cimperman as to throw slaps at his opponent, Dennis Kucinich.

Talk about overkill. Is this the most important political race in decades to the Pee Dee? Does Cleveland teeter on a precipice with Kucinich to tip us into the abyss?

“We do not come to this conclusion lightly. We have watched Kucinich’s career for decades; he once worked in our newsroom,” said the Pee Dee.

“Not come to the conclusion lightly?” Pray tell, not so much how heavily you weighed the decision but when did you come to the conclusion he should go – the day after Kucinich was re-elected two years ago.

“We have watched Kucinich’s career for decades…” Well, you certainly haven’t spent much of those decades being fair in your “watching.”