Cuyahoga County has paid MMPI another $1,240,799 in addition to the monthly fees of $333,333.33, according to figures from the County Auditor’s department.

The monthly fees have cost County taxpayers some $2.3 million to MMPI. As I noted earlier, MMPI collects this each month as a fee and give no details of spending for the monthly check. The added $1.2 million went for other tasks performed for or by MMPI.

In addition, the County itself has spent $611,801 of the sales tax monies collected since January 2008. The total collected as of the end of October was $74,454,985.70.

The breakdown of the County’s expenditures is $61,517 in salary, $9,839 in benefits and $540,365 in contracts associated with the Medical Mart and Convention Center project. I am seeking a breakdown of the $540,000 payments.

The three payments made to MMPI, the Chicago firm contracted with to build and operate the Med Mart and Convention Center by County Commissioners Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones, were in the amounts of $125,185, $385,129 and $730,485, according to the County Auditor.

I find the way MMPI bills Cuyahoga County for its monthly “fee” an example of bad management taken to extreme. The billings tell the County nothing of what MMPI does for its healthy fee.

Here’s what the entire “invoice” from MMPI says as a description of what it did for $333,333.33 – or a penny shy of $1 million every three months:

“Const. Mgmt/Developer fee - $333,333.33. Total due $333,333.33.”

That’s it. Pretty much a blank sheet of paper.

No mention of what work might have been done. No mention of how many people did what. No mention of money paid out by MMPI. No mention of hours worked. Not a shred of documentation. Nothing. Nada.

Now that’s the way to be able to bill a client. Sweet.

Just take our word for it, says MMPI. We’ve been giving you $333,333.33 worth of service this month. And on every 15th of the month the bill comes. And we pay. Now, since March, MMPI has pocketed $2.3 plus million. So every quarter another $1 million goes from the County to MMPI on a fee basis.

You’d think that Tim Hagan would have learned the lesson from Gateway when he and Mike White allowed the construction of the arena to go forward BEFORE they got the signature of George and Gordon Gund on line to occupy the Gateway arena.

I talked with MMPI’s Mark Falanga after a three hour Council briefing to ask a simple question. Did MMPI expect to build a private medical mart on public land at no cost?

MMPI’s Falanga told Council that among a number of possibilities examined, MMPI wanted to build its Medical Mart on the Mall area between City Hall and the County Courthouse overlooking Lake Erie. Well, who wouldn’t, especially for nothing.

Falanga kept saying that the County was paying the City of Cleveland $20 million, as if that answered my question. The $20 million was for convention center and public auditorium. The latter Falanga has tossed out as useless or worse.

The site originally expected to house MMPI’s Medical Mart was on private land that had to be purchased. MMPI failed to make a deal.

I asked Falanga that since MMPI was rejecting the purchase of private land at St. Clair and Ontario was he now proposing to build it on private government land, the Mall, at no cost. He told Council members that the owners wanted $24 million, a budget breaker, for the St. Clair site.

But he wouldn’t answer my question. He kept dodging it by referring to the $20 million deal between the county and city.

A cost for the city land hardly got mentioned by city officials.

I guess I’m just stupid. I don’t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.

But residents already pay taxes to have their garbage picked up. Non-profits don’t any pay taxes. Seems to be a contradiction right there. Don’t you go after those that don’t pay taxes rather than those that do?

But there’s more.

Most Cleveland residents are not doing that well. Many of them you would call low income. Non-profits may be having some money problems but there’s plenty of money there.

Example: The Cleveland Clinic, likely the biggest of non-profits, had $3.4 BILLION in revenues in 2007, latest IRS report available.

Example: University Hospitals had net assets of nearly a billion, $994-million, in 2001, latest I could find.

Example: Cleveland Museum of Art has net assets of $873 million.

Example: Cleveland Foundation – assets of $1.49 billion.

Example: Gund Foundation – Assets of more than a half of billion dollars.

So from these behemoths you’d get $5 million a year but from working and unemployed stiffs you’d get $13 million? And you know the $9.25 garbage monthly fee will soon be $12, then $15 and then more.

See what I mean? Mayor Frank Jackson wants to charge $9.25 a month, or $111 a year for garbage pickup. Hitting the little guy because he’s afraid of tapping those who paid his campaign bills.

This is GARBAGE, Mayor Jackson! The same will go a weak-kneed City Council if it, as is likely, go along with it.

Is there a council member who has any regard for the people of Cleveland?

Jackson is trying to play a game by saying that he’s following a report of experts that are as bad as he is. See Henry Gomez’s story about Jackson’s tax your garbage GARBAGE: http://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/index.ssf/2009/11/cleveland_mayor_frank_jackson_7.html

I wrote the other day how politicians don’t go to the well off or the rich for tax increase, they go to the little guy. Regressive tax upon regressive tax. This is a tax! I outlined tax after tax that slams the little guy while the wealthy enjoy low taxes. Please take a look :http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/11962

Mayor Jackson has made a mistake that I hope wakes up some people in Cleveland. People should be angry. Damned angry.

Mayor Jackson, you can’t even pick up the garbage with the high, unjust taxes paid in Cleveland. This is a new low.

Clevelanders over the years have taken over the Yankees, the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, Madison Square Garden. If sports, why not the book industry. Well, not quite that ambitious but Bill Gunlocke who gave Cleveland the alternative paper The Edition, has started a blog and wonders if New York City is really a Book City.

Bill, who also ran a book store in The Arcade when was The Arcade, questions whether it’s true that N. Y. C. is the Book City. Maybe it’s Cleveland, he wonders.

Anyway, Bill has always had the ability to bring maybe a quirky, but wise and different view. It is what he brought to Cleveland with The Edition and I wish he was still here and not in New York.

His love of school kids comes through. It’s a passion that keeps him looking for a new way to inspire and provoke.

Take a look at his first blog entry here. You won’t be disappointed:

http://acityreader.blogspot.com/

I haven’t read the 300 page plus consulting report on management and efficiency of Cleveland government and I probably won’t. I'll leave it to others.I know it won’t touch the one revenue source that Cleveland should tap if it had any concern for its citizens. It is out of the question. Won’t happen.

The so-called city income tax – the city’s largest revenue source by far - is really a payroll tax. It’s a tax on your wage income. It’s a regressive tax that takes from the first dollar someone earns. It’s a tax that hits people so poor that they don’t pay federal income taxes but must pay this tax. The feds at least tax somewhat progressively though the rich still get away with tax robbery.

If we really wanted a fair tax the so-called city income tax would be progressive. In other words, the guy who makes $150 a week would pay far less proportionally than the guy who makes $150 or $500 a day, or more.

It’s an obvious source of more revenue for cities. But it’s ignored. Why? Because wealthy people decide who gets taxed and by how much.

It’s legal theft calculatedly devised by professional hired thugs. Sometimes called lawyers or legislators.

Were there failures or absence of institutional and community structure that helped make the mass murderer of Imperial Avenue get away with the killings so easily? Yes, there were.

People ask the question, why didn’t someone notice what was happening? How did this happen right under the noses of the police and the community? Where’s the “community?” What’s the matter with people?

Cleveland neighborhoods have been deprived of many things but likely most destructive has been the purposeful neglect and sometime suppression of community activism over a long period of time here. It has worked its destructive way.

You can’t have an aware, alive community that’s a repressed community.

Cleveland in the 1970s enjoyed strong community activism. There were many problems. But there was some fight in people! Neighborhoods formed their own power bases and community development corporations (CDCs) received federal and foundation funding for neighborhood improvement. People were feeling their power.

But there were flaws that eventually led to failure. It didn’t have to be.

Cleveland is a town with heavy upper institutional power. Lots of wealth. It rules. Not timidly at times.

The reason we don’t know why the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority dumped its chief executive Adam Wasserman is because the real leader of the board – John Carney – believes it’s none of your business.

The Port Authority is one of those governmental bodies set up to avoid public input. It has an unelected board. The public, in fact, knows little if anything about its members. Probably cares less.

One aspect of the board has remained rather fixed over the years – the name Carney.

The political head of this powerful family, the late James M. Carney, twice unsuccessful candidate for mayor (once dropped out, once defeated), was chairman during the Port’s early years.

Presently, his nephew John Carney, son of the late judge John Carney, has been on the board for some years. He was chairman. To avoid the limelight or the spotlight, Carney resigned as board chairman. However, it seems he’s still in control. He is civically connected. Many boards. His wife, Tana, is a Cleveland Foundation board member. She was a judicial appointee, meaning political connections and power.

Ran into an old friend this morning at University Hospital where we older people are likely to meet. Boy was she angry. At Dennis Kucinich, a favorite of hers.

Kucinich, as you may have noted, vote NO on the health care bill the other night. He gave good reasons. It squeaked in by a couple of votes. So his NO vote was a typical Kucinich vote.

But this fan said she had given him her last dime. And I’m sure she’s given him a lot more than that.

I don’t know if Kucinich would have voted NO if his was a deciding vote. Maybe not.

But his NO vote isn’t a surprise to me. Kucinich is playing to the crowd. His crowd. And he’s a hero with his crowd.

They respond. They love the little fighter. Kucinich drew immediate attention on the local Cleveland Leader web site. Today there are nearly 7,500 hits on the posting about his vote. Most I’ve ever seen. I assume that many people around the nation have Dennis Kucinich on a Google alert. Every time his name appears they get a Google alert. They click and read about their hero.

It attests to his national drawing power as a political celebrity.