I attended the KennedyConCenter meeting this morning - held before the scheduled meeting of the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners.
All the TV cameras and paper reporters were there. Big news was afoot!
I rode up in the elevator with Jimmy Dimora who (like wee willie winkie all through the house) was hollering up and down the hallway “We have a deal! We have a deal!”
So by the time the meeting was called to order by Mr. Lawson-Jones, the cat was out of the bag.
NOW IT WAS SHOWTIME, every seat in the Commissioners’ Chamber was occupied, the TV crews had pulled the blinds to shut out the daylight, and the stage lights were making Tim Hagan sweat.
Fred the Fixer was welcomed to the podium – trademark three corned light blue hankie in his breast pocket - and then everyone complimented everyone else in the room Round and Round the compliments flew. At one point they had forgotten Joe Roman at the back of the room, but that slip up was corrected and Joe was complimented too.
NOTHING IN WRITING AT THIS TIME, Mr. Nance announced. But the deal is done, that is why we stayed up late last night working on it and why I had more telephone calls this morning with the Kennedy group.
More Compliments – Jimmy Dimora complimented Mr. Hagan and Mr. Jones for having the foresight to let him (Jimmy) work the deal in secret with Fred the Fixer. (Mr. Hagan pointed out, with a bit of a facetious twist, that the 3 county commissioners can’t meet together outside of a public meeting because two or more commissioners constitute a quorum and thus a meeting outside the public view violates the Sunshine Law).
Ed Hauser asked if there would be any public process in deciding on the location of the convention center. Mr. Nance answered that Joe Roman and the Greater Cleveland Partnership would be involved.
Ed repeated “ I asked about public process..”
Mr. Nance deflected and Mr. Hagan, in an irritated and irritating tone, went off about how this is a “representative government”, and that the voters (meaning Ed) had elected the Commissioners to make these secret 400 million dollar 40 year bond deals for us without any input.
Through the chair, Mr. Lawson-Jones, I asked Mr. Nance if there wasn’t a state statute which governed sales tax collection which was intended to fund a convention center.
(THERE IS)
Mr. Nance said he “wouldn’t debate that here”.
More compliments.
Susan Miller asked how much money had been collected to date. The County lady who is apparently in the accounting department went to the mike and told us that “11.1 million had been collected through March”.
This is much less than what was projected to be collected weekly (tax started October 1, 2007) when the sales tax was imposed. At that time (last summer) the .25% sales tax was projected to collect about 3.3 million monthly; five months times 3.3 equal 16.5 million.
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I believe that the Commissioners are very arrogant to be secretly making half billion dollar deals for a sales tax supported convention center without a public vote.
Why a law firm in town doesn’t take this on as a class action I don’t know. The class action would claim that the commissioners were collecting a sales tax hike (specifically earmarked for a convention center) into the county general fund in direct violation of the state statute which requires a public vote to collect sales tax for a convention center. I would further add charges that this “dealing” with one vendor (Kennedy) for a 400 million dollar publicly paid for facility was a violation of the public bidding and public procurement laws which demand competitive bidding.
I would further add racketeering charges, but that’s just me.
If the suit prevailed, the millions collected to date would be returned to the taxpayers with a third (the usual contingency distribution), or at least costs, going to the law firm which pursued the suit in the public interest.
The Commissioners are knowingly and willfully evading the state convention center regulations by collecting a sales tax for a convention center and depositing it into the general fund. They are intentionally doing it this way to avoid a public vote on the sales tax increase. A vote the Commissioners, Fred Nance, Toby Cosgrove, and Joe Roman know will fail - the public doesn't want to spend their tax on a new concenter.
Mr. Nance and the other participants know that they are evading the state sales-tax-hike-for-convention-center public vote requirement. The Commissioners’ counsel even announced this morning that the dissolution of the prior convention center authority was part of the plan to make an end run around this state convention center tax public vote requirement. (not quite his words, he said the dissolution was necessary in order to collect the tax into the general fund – who can elaborate on this?)
So what I see is arrogance. Arrogance on the part of public employees who think they know so much more than their constituents about what is good for their constituents that it is in the constituent’s interest to be denied the right to vote on their own sales tax increase.
That’s ARROGANCE.
Then more compliments…..
I predict there is still no deal and that this dog and pony parade is just more of a stall tactic.
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