Roldo

One of the factors we don’t know about the deal for the Medical Mart and Convention Center is what the lease will say or thereafter how often the lease will be ignored to the benefit of the developer.

Cuyahoga County has bestowed to private interests, in a memorandum of understanding, some $903 million for construction and operation of a Medical Mart and Convention Center. The public, however, doesn’t yet know what it is buying. The politicians have shown over and over that they don’t care.

With Commissioner Tim Hagan’s close association with the Kennedy family and its connection to MMPI (Merchandise Mart Properties Inc.) of Chicago, headed by Chris Kennedy, son of late Sen. Robert Kennedy, don’t expect much critical oversight.

Want some hints of what we may be buying?

Hagan, to me, is the key.

Hagan - a principal mover in Gateway – remained suspiciously quiet as some very strange and exotic spending spiraled out of control in that highly subsidized deal.

I can’t understand why the Plain Dealer blatantly lies to us about the cost of the medical mart and convention center.

A PD editorial on March 24 says the project “… will be financed by $400 million in public money.” That is incorrect.

The memorandum of understanding between Cuyahoga County Commissioners and the no-bid MMPI (Merchandise Mart Properties Inc.) of Chicago states clearly:

The operator (MMPI) “will lease the Facility to the County under a 20-year lease-purchase agreement obligating the Count to pay annual rent in an amount equal to (a) $40 million during a period commencing with the signing of the lease and ending on Sept. 30, 2027 or on such earlier date as the financing agreements may permit such rent payments to end plus (underling in the document) (b) the supplemental payments (defined below) on a monthly basis during such term.”

Now $40 million times 20 years do not equal $400 million. It equals $800 million. The “plus” supplement mentioned in the lease document says that the County will pay amounts “equal to $6 million in years one through three and $5 million in the remaining years.” And that’s with three percent escalation “if certain financial targets are not met.” So it could be more.

1968. What a year it was. The whole world was watching.

Rioting, chaos, assassinations, ghetto and student uprisings caused a nation to doubt itself.

America, at war in Vietnam, was having a nervous breakdown at home.

Cleveland, a troubled city, had an uprising in the black community, a four-day outbreak of violent hostilities.

Vietnam, raging in 1968, would take the lives of from 55,000 to 58,000 Americans with a total death count of 1.7 million during only the American phase of the Indochina war, 1965-1973.

President John F. Kennedy had already been assassinated in November, 1963, a lasting shock to the American psyche. Malcolm X had been assassinated by February, 1965. In 1965, Watts erupted in August in Los Angeles as did Hough in Cleveland in April.

We had seen the rise of the civil rights movement, black power and the Black Panther Party.

But 1968 brought two other significant assassinations of public figures allied with progressive traditions and hope of better lives for the deprived.

Historians someday will determine whether America survived the shocks of this time period.

I believe these shock waves continue to reverberate in the American culture and not to our benefit.

Here is some of what the events of 40 years ago brought to us.

As the East 9th Street property bought from Jacobs bounces back to them, and the muddled dance of trying to lure a Medical Mart as an excuse to build a too-expensive and money-losing Convention Center continues, when is anyone going to ask the Commissioners for some accounting?

The mealy-mouthed Pee Dee actually wrote an editorial about East 9th's old Ameritrust building debacle last Thursday.

Yet the editorial was absent the names “Hagan” and “Dimora.” How can you ignore the principal actors? Isn’t anyone to blame for the shoddy planning of the County?

Can we expect even a modicum of competence from our County Government? Hell, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners – at least Timmy Hagan and Jimmy Dimora – even make George Bush look skillful.

Boy, they really want to kill him off this time.

It’s like “stick the silver dagger” in the little guy’s heart. Let’s get him once and for all, cry the corporate thugs, the Pee Dee and Brent Larkin.

Some big bucks are out on the street to finally ice the little bugger.

How can one tell? Just take a gander at the money flowing from downtown developers and Cleveland’s elite to Joe Cimperman, the main opponent to incumbent Congressman Dennis Kucinich. They can’t stuff his pockets with enough, as this look at his end of 2007 financial report shows.

There’s really only one reason they want to get Dennis. He doesn’t do their bidding. Never did. Never will.

Isn’t there room for one alternative voice in politics here? Do all Congress members have to be sell-outs like Stephanie Tubbs Jones?

Downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman, imbued with raw ambition, has made himself the tool developers and corporate biggies. For them, he’s a chance to retire Kucinich permanently.

It’s too bad because Cimperman is one of the brightest Council members in years, and has some progressive political instincts. If he doesn’t win, he may have hurt his future with this election try.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have money and resources, step right up.

We’re giving away money by the truckload. Wait, you taxpayer/suckers, please leave, you’re not eligible. However, we’ll send you the bill.

That’s the message I got from a deal presented by Mayor Frank Jackson with the full and hardy cooperation of a feeble, led-by-the-nose City Council. Is there a single council member worth a dime of the $70,000 or so they are paid? I don’t think so.

Let’s start this way. RTA is spending some $200 million in tax funds to redo Euclid Avenue. RTA says, “The goal of the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project is to improve transit, as well as support increased development along Euclid Avenue [emphasis mine].” Since buses have been operating already along Euclid Avenue for years, I’d say that most of that $200 million is for the “as well as support…”

Here’s the breakdown of the money: $83 million from the feds; $75 million from the State of Ohio; $21 million locally from RTA; $10 million from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Committee; and $8 million from the City of Cleveland. I know that only adds up to $197 million but let’s stipulate it will be a lot more before the project is completed.

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.”

I’ve been whacked again by my critic, known as Banshee (on LakewoodBuzz.com's Community Forum). Banshee finds my censure of Dick Jacobs off base. Again.

“All your grousing about ill gotten wealth? Nobody’s listening,” wrote Banshee.

Apparently, however, somebody’s reading.

Banshee, I’ll have to say, was also a bit complimentary to me.

Of my response a couple of weeks ago, Banshee wrote, “All I can say is outstanding response.” But, Banshee says, “You are still all wet about Dick Jacobs and his contributions (to) the city of Cleveland…” Banshee believes a winning baseball team trumps all.

However, we really have to be more discriminating about the people we hold up as honorable citizens.

I know Dick Jacobs and he’s not an honorable man.

I’m going to give it one more try, Banshee.

Dick Jacobs is a scoundrel. He’ll be one ‘til he dies.

I think it’s pretty well known that Jacobs had a special relationship with George Forbes, former Council President of Cleveland City Council. It was to Jacobs’s benefit and the city’s loss.

The deck was always stacked. But it has been re-stacked and re-stacked by our generous city and county leaders.

The original lease between Gateway and the Cleveland Indians in 1991 gave the naming rights revenue to Gateway to help pay for the stadium and arena. That seemed quite fair. After all, little other revenue was headed to the entity that built the project.

However, when Progressive Insurance recently signed a deal to pay naming rights of $3.6 million a year, or $56 million over 16 years, not a penny will go to Gateway. More important, not a penny will go to pay back Cuyahoga County the hundreds of millions of dollars owed county taxpayers.

The $56 million all goes into the pockets of the Dolan family.

This deal reveals how, no matter the circumstances, government now serves the wealthy at the expense of the ordinary citizen. And – to the detriment of our democracy – the ordinary citizen remains unaware or unconcerned.

So the $56-million goes into the pockets of Larry Dolan, baseball team owner.

What happened?

You can read all the Pee Dee coverage – as out of proportion as it was – but you are not told about the switch or why or how it happened.