Once upon a time there was a guy named Tim Hagan – and John Carney was Tim’s friend. And JC was a key player in the Cuyahoga and Cleveland Port Authority (CCPA) which Authority could get million dollar bonds for parking lots and whatever.
Tim got divorced from JC’s daughter and left Clevehoga politics and then met an actress from Boston. Cape Cod is nice in the summer, and Boston is a nice place with nice people.
One of those nice people is John Fish, president of Suffolk Construction. Suffolk wasn’t shy about traveling so when they heard that Tim was from Clevehoga they said “Hey! We can make money in Clevehoga too!” So Suffolk told Rhode Island developer Star Wasserman (or maybe Star told Suffolk) that there was a 40 million dollar parking structure to build in University Heights, Ohio.
And the $40 million was going to come from the CCPA cuz JC told Tim that building a parking garage would be good for economic development in Clevehoga – a lot of people would be hired to work next to the parking garage in the University Square Mall and those people would send a big steady stream of payroll taxes to Mayor Rothschild (she got snookered)
So after Suffolk collected the $40 million for a parking structure designed by a Watertown, Ma. company that soon went out of business – everyone was happy because by the time the parking garage began to fall down Star Wasserman had flipped it – and anyway CCPA owns the crumbling parking garage so the new Mall owner doesn’t really have to worry.
In fact everything was so on the up-and-up - Clevehoga and the overall economic mood was so up beat - that Tim Hagan thought “Hey! If I can get 40 million for a guy from Massachusetts for a parking structure that is falling down, I shouldn’t be shy. Maybe I can shoot for about a billion dollars for another friend from Massachusetts for a MEDCON which will occupy (on a good day) the basement of the old Higbees!”.
But Tim knew the Clevehoga voters wouldn’t understand the wisdom of a MEDCON in the basement of the old Higbees so he decided to fast track the project so there would be quick and certain money in the pot for Chris Kennedy, his good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Chris really appreciated Tim’s thoughtfulness so Chris came to Clevehoga to sing about MEDCON and VornadoRealtyTrust. There were lots of powerful people at Vornado creating showers of trickle down. This MEDCON would be a GOLD MINE. That much was clear.
To make sure the voters were not able to slow things down or screw things up Tim hired Fred the Fixer Nance to wear his 3 cornered pocket hanky to all the public meetings where Fred would tell the TV cameras how well he’d fixed the deal with Chris. Everything was written down on paper and provided as mimeographed handouts in the DirtyDealer sold in Public Square once a week.
Joe Roman helped too. Joe brought in his citizen’s committee to make damn sure the public didn’t foul things up.
Then the FBI came to town. Not because of anything Tim did. Not because of anything the Fixer did. And not because Wilcox was the lawyer for Star Wasserman when they got the 40 million of bond money for the parking structure while at the same time Wilcox was the lawyer for CCPA.
No, the FBI came to town because Jimmy Dimora had a County employee paint the gutters of one of Jimmy’s houses (Jim supplied the paint). Jim didn’t have time to paint because Jim was working nites with the Fixer in secret with Chris. The public knew about the secret meetings because Tim had told the public that the meetings had to be secret.
Tim knew that the MEDCON didn’t have to go out for the usual public bidding process because his friend Chris was a “sole source” procurement. Only Tim’s friend Chris could make a MEDCON. So the billion dollar contract negotiations with Chris had to be done in secret because someone else might figure out what Chris knew and build a MEDCON somewhere else.
Now one thing I forgot to tell you was how Tim figured out how to prime the MEDCON pump for Chris. Tim had to be sure no one thought he was proposing to build a public convention facility – because under Ohio law the voters must decide to impose a sales tax to raise money for a convention facility. Tim knew this arcane rule would get in the way of the voter’s trickle down so instead of raising money for a convention center, Tim and Jim just SAID it was for a convention center but the sales tax went right into the general fund – this was a smart way around the legislative prohibition against raising taxes for a CON center without a vote.
Tim felt pretty smart!
The FBI didn’t mind Tim being smarter than the Ohio laws cuz the FBI knew what trickle down could do. And the FBI didn’t mind Chris pushing a MEDCON because the FBI knew that Chris was only in Clevehoga to provide an economic life boat to people in Cleveland and Beachwood.
Now where was I with this story? Right.
Anyway it isn’t really even slightly coincidental that two outfits from Boston, where Tim’s summer friends live, came to Clevehoga to get involved with really screwy non-bid public money deals that involved building a collapsing parking structure with $40 million from Mr. Carney, and then after a few dry years coming up with Chris to help Clevehoga with the MEDCON. Yes, it is just coincidence that Clevehoga has:
2 people from Boston who have no connection with Clevehoga other than Tim and
2 multi million dollar non-bid jobs for economic development in Clevehoga and
2 multi million dollar non-bid jobs funded through bonding channels connected to Tim
That’s why this story is all fiction – because it is all coincidence. You know what they say – Fiction is Stranger than Truth. And they all lived happily ever after.