HERE'S $100,000 BUT IT'S NOT APPROVAL - HUH?

Submitted by Roldo on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 19:06.

I have a hard time understanding how the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) can give $100,000 to get something on the ballot but can’t it support what it wants on the ballot.

 

Would you give $100,000 to something you hated?

 

GCP announced it would donate $100,000 to help put the reform issue that would significantly change Cuyahoga County government on the ballot.

Isn't this just what you'd expect from our mixed up leadership?

 

However, Joe Roman, GCP’s $445,000 a year president (2007 figure), says GCP isn’t endorsing the measure to be put to the voters. Not yet anyway. A $100,000 check doesn’t say you are for it? What does it take? A $1 million? $2 million?

 

The County reform measure has been lagging in financial support. Until the GCP contribution only $20,000 had been donated, according to the Plain Dealer today.

 

The reform wants to create a single county executive instead of the three County Commissioners – not too resistant to that move – but it would create in its place an 11 member council-type legislative body, which seems too cumbersome, bureaucratic and an invitation to more patronage and cost.

 

The GCP backing - with money if not its official endorsement – suggests that the reform is generally a corporate move to elect some Republicans from more wealthy districts that would be created. The three commissioners are all Democrats, though Republicans have been elected county-wide.

 

So it’s reform with a hook. And that’s hard to swallow.

 

 

 

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Where is Crawford's money in this?

I thought Ed Crawford was fiunding all this Republican restructuring stuff. Is the GCP just how Crawford is hiding funding the reorganization of county government, explaining why the GCP hasn't gone through the process of endorsing... this is just a courtesy Wizard of Oz kinda' thing.

Gotta love those NGOs. What is GCP, legally, anyways?

Disrupt IT

Where county-restructuring Crawford's money definitely is...

Besides in Pepper Pike... with Mayor Akers et al...

From Henry Gomez' blog, in February 2009... Crawford and his executive are running in very fast, impressive company, with White Hat and a parking company from LA (wonder what each wants from council):

The Council Leadership Fund had a balance of $313,294.37 at the end of 2008. Sweeney raised $34,500 for the pot in the second half of the year. There were only six donations, the smallest a $2,000 contribution from the Continental Airlines Employee Fund.

Other contributors:

• David Brennan, the charter-school magnate, $10,000

• Dave Damus, executive with the L&R Group parking enterprise in Los Angeles, $10,000

• Edward Crawford, chairman of Park-Ohio Holdings Corp., $5,000 (Note: Crawford was one of several suburban businessmen who lobbied hard for this year's council reduction.)

• Teri Brenkus, an executive with Crawford's companies, $5,000

• Carpenters Political Action Committee, $2,500

Disrupt IT

They want us to decide?

 

They want us to decide?

I have and it should not be eleven districts, based on the states congressional house districts. It should be twenty districts and based on the counties historical township boundaries.

One representative elected within each, the charter of the district chair would be to seek out sub-regionalism. That being a consolidation of municipalities within each district.

Ideally each district would become a semi-autonomous; within a regional county model.

The states districts are not functional, they are political.

We need functional change; and also political; the former comes with the later. The later will not bring about the former.

Each district if based on the township boundaries could address economic development within each district. The funding from within and then the funding and support from the greater county council; that would be all the districts in the county as a whole.

The county>districts>wards>parcels. That would lead to greater and greater efficiency, through consolidations and the relative economy of scale and then also greater diversity in tax bases.

Ideally each district would be or have a well balanced and diversified economy.

The proposed use of state congressional districts does nothing functional, it creates eleven part-time commissioners. That are proposed to be paid $45,000.00 annually, then what?

Do we want to begin to move towards regionalism or not?

Our revolution is not so revolutionary, it is not or near a profound revelation is it. More time needs to be spent on this, much more time and much more thought. It is not just the county that needs change, it is the State and the Federal systems as well. The changes that occur at the regional level can instigate changes in the State and federal systems.

The process is inherently a modular design, the region is a recipient of large amounts of intergovernmental funding. That’s an interface that must be better defined, the funds coming into the region applied within districts. The goals and targets assigned and measured, that’s about accountability and assigned metrics to these politicals.

We all want performance metric assigned to politicals, we want them to make the changes and apply the resource in that manner and define what they are intended to do.

A modular system can do that, define the modules as district and record the values as within, the initiatives and why.