ED HAUSER QUESTIONS PORT AUTHORITY IN ABSENTIA

The late Ed Hauser - who in death has become a symbol of responsible citizen action - reached out yesterday to seriously question the motives of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority’s operations via a letter based on a conversation he had the day before he died.

Former Plain Dealer city editor, Cleveland Magazine columnist and sometime public relations man Michael D. Roberts presented a letter at the Port meeting yesterday. Its contents were based on a conversation Roberts had with Hauser the day before he died and from documents provided by Hauser’s research.

Hauser was a diligent observer and sharp critic of the Port’s lack of responsiveness to public concerns. He typically videotaped board meetings and often spoke out at the meetings.

Two major factors were presented by Roberts to the board from Hauser’s research.

One, that the Port Authority, with public money, paid more than $1 million to Success Group of Columbus, to lobby successfully to allow the Port Authority to conduct some operations without public input.

Second, that a computer crash, never announced by Port officials, had destroyed documentation of the Port.

“Hauser’s civic activities regarding the port focused on the lack of transparency he felt it exhibited as a public body over a lengthy period of time. The documents in his possession that morning covered a period of roughly a decade during which more than a million dollars of public money was expected on the services of the Success Group,” Roberts wrote in his letter to port officials.

He went on: “Hauser was astonished to find that there was no detailed accounting made by the Success Group, or requested by the Port, of specific services that had been rendered for the million plus dollars. In his words, the Port Authority had been sending monthly checks to this group without any accounting of why public money was being funneled into lobbying efforts.”

Hauser, according to Roberts, wanted to know how much the lobbying firm had been paid to change Ohio law to dodge public hearings on plans for development, construction and improvements of port facilities.

“Basically, Ed wanted to know how much the public paid in order to have its voice silence by a clever manipulation of the law that was attached at the last minute to a transportation bill in the Ohio legislature in 2000, in a classic abuse of democratic government,” said the letter.

Hauser planned to seek answers about the Success Group and the computer crash, according to Roberts.

“In this memory, I’d like to submit that letter for him and request that the board provide the answers to the questions Ed intended to ask before his untimely death.”

Roberts did not read the letter but left copies with Port officials.

“I have had no direct response, but I’m not surprised,” he wrote in an e-mail to me.

The public waits with abated breath. Let’s have the answers. Now.