East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer eviscerates Issue 6 promoters and their promoter, the Pee Dee, our morning voice from Corporate Headquarters.

Hard to disagree. Read it yourself:

Statement from Mayor Eric J. Brewer regarding Issue 6

October 25, 2009 - City of East Cleveland

“The hell with the Plain Dealer’s opinion.  Vote NO on Issue 6.”

Bill Mason has presided over the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office since 1998 and it's been the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI investigating all the corruption that's taken place in county since he's held office.  Mason didn't prosecute Emmanuel Onunwor, he counted him as a friend.  He didn't prosecute Nate Gray, he counted him as a political donor.  I'm still waiting for him to return the donation to the businessman who was investigated and prosecuted by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for money laundering.

Martin Zanotti manages Parma Heights, but his 2007 audit shows he overspent his budget by nearly $1 million without Council authorization, and authorized 59 percent of his purchase orders to be pushed through without the finance director's signature.  He's on his way out the door because he's a poor public manager, but the Plain Dealer thinks he's a genius.

Bruce Akers manages Pepper Pike, a city with 6000 residents.  His city's 2007 audit shows he saved a whopping $6000 a year for his taxpayers by scrapping a contract for someone to sweep his streets and buying a used $5000 street sweeper.  Big deal.  With homes starting around $400,000 and an $11 million budget, no great intellect is needed to manage a bedroom suburb that doesn't have crime, social problems, decaying housing stock, homelessness or troubled schools.

The fact is these three individuals have no experience managing an urban county with urban problems.    None has big budget experience.  None studied county government.  None is a student of government.  None is an expert in government, but yet they determined that Cuyahoga County government was broken and developed an idea to fix it.   With the help of the Plain Dealer, a newspaper that lost all sense of journalistic ethics when its owners allegedly conspired to help close the Cleveland Press, Cuyahoga County voters have never been told the truth about how bad Mason, Zanotti and Akers' plan would harm them.

No smart business person changes the way their company does business in a bad economy, but yet Mason, Zanotti and Akers are pushing a plan, backed by the Plain Dealer, that will waste and divert millions of taxpayer dollars on "learning" how to operate a new government. 

There will be the cost of doing everything from changing rules to changing purchasing and personnel policies to changing the names of officeholders on letterhead and placing new name plates on doors.  Labor contracts will have to be renegotiated to accomodate a new governmental and accountability structure.  It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to change the county's website, and to restructure its investment practices.  Thousands of Cuyahoga County workers will lose their jobs and thousands of families will suffer.  Cuyahoga County neighborhoods will suffer with the expected job losses, and you can bet your bottom dollar that under a County CEO, members of the minority communities will be negatively impacted if Issue 6 passes.  The jobs they now hold will go out the door.  All anyone has to do is look at the hiring practices of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to see the evidence of "change."  The county's nearly 40 percent "minority" population is definitely not reflected in that workforce.

The only individuals who stand to benefit are the consultants who've been salivating at the opportunity to go to "one guy" to get contracts, and big business interests that know how to spend money to manipulate the public to gain control of their tax resources.  It's an old game that has never changed.

Real accountability comes with an informed and not manipulated electorate.  I've met with the Plain Dealer's publisher and editorial leaders.  They're good writers.  They're not good thinkers.  They know nothing about governing nations, states, counties, cities and school districts but they offer uninformed "opinions" to readers as if they do.  They know nothing about the rules of government, but yet they write as if their opinion is the Holy Grail. They arrogantly railroad voters into following bad plans and bad people because they have the power to do so.   If the Plain Dealer and its leadership were so enlightened the newspaper wouldn't be paper thin and they would be growing rather than shrinking their workforce. 

Cuyahoga County voters would do well to follow this one bit of advice.  DON'T TRUST THE PLAIN DEALER TO SHARE THE TRUTH ABOUT COUNTY REFORM.  It's not what the newspaper has written about county reform that voters should consider, it's what the newspaper hasn't written. 

The Plain Dealer has not written about the two Summit County officials who were indicted and convicted for corruption 10 years ago even though it's the only county out of 88 Ohio counties with a CEO.

The Plain Dealer has not written about the five active FBI investigations taking place of County CEO's in other states or the two successive New Jersey County CEO's who have gone to jail for corruption from one county.

The Plain Dealer has ignored the fact that no cost benefit analyses was conducted by Mason, Zanotti and Akers to determine how much it will cost to convert from one form of government to another, or to identify how much money will actually be saved, if any.

The Plain Dealer has avoided providing any real scrutiny of Zanotti's "claim" that changing the way Cuyahoga County is governed will create economic development and new jobs.  The only new jobs will come from a County CEO firing current county workers and giving their jobs to his or her friends, relatives and supporters.

The Plain Dealer has ignored the fact that the vast majority of County CEO's operate in counties with populations between 14,000 and 100,000.  Cuyahoga County government is over 200 years old and we're a county with a population of roughly 1 million.  We don't live in Chittlin' Switch, Tennessee.

AGAIN, DON'T TRUST THE PLAIN DEALER.

To the voters of Cuyahoga County, Issue 6 is BAD.  Right now the voters have full control over the fates of any current county elected official.  You vote for the Commissioners, the Treasurer, the Auditor, the Sheriff, the Prosecutor, the Engineer, the Recorder, the Clerk of Courts and the County Coroner.  They come to your neighborhoods to meet with you and to share information with you and to ask you for your vote.  Under Mason, Zanotti and Akers' plan, they will get rid of every elected official you've already said "yes" to and one guy, a County CEO, gets to run the whole show.  Voters now have direct access to their current county officials.  They'll lose that access under a County CEO.  More importantly, can anyone trust Mason when he's pushing a plan that screws every other county elected official while protecting his own job?

Cuyahoga County voters should VOTE NO on Issue 6.  Tell your family and friends not to vote for Issue 6.  Copy this post and pass it along to your friends.  If you care about saving jobs, making sure the streets, water and sewer lines in your cities are maintained, and if you care about providing vital health and human services to thousands of individuals and families who need it, vote NO on Issue 6.