Mayor Frank Jackson did a somewhat strange interview with National Public Radio host Scott Simon, no stranger to Cleveland.
Jackson had an opportunity to sell the city in a piece entitled “How Cleveland Could Rise Again.” However, his sights seemed to be set on the rebuke he received recently by City Council on a non-bid deal that didn’t pass the muster.
Simon, as a reporter out of Chicago during the late 1970s, made a number of trips here to cover the hectic administration of Mayor Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich attracted so many out-of-town reporters that he likely filled more hotel rooms than the city’s sports teams. But that’s another story.
Suffice to say that Simon is a lover of cities and often of Cleveland in particular.
Simon, long the host of Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR, asked Jackson “…what kind of short urgent speech he gives to convince businesses to come to Cleveland.” Sounded like a good softball opener for the mayor.
Jackson replied, “That’s a salesman and a politician. I don’t do those kinds of things. I need to get into some details. I’ll try to coral them, you know, and monopolize some time. But it’s basically things are in flux. Things are in constant transition, and the old way of doing things will dig us deeper in a hole. We have to do things differently.”
The subject matter pretty much centered on the Mayor’s thrust to attract new businesses here. At the center was his flawed attempt to get Council to agree to a no-bid, long-term contract for new technology lighting fixtures with a Chinese company called Sunpu-Opto. The company was to open shop here as part of the agreement.
The deal, as I’ve said before, stinks. It still stinks.
In the interview, disjointed by Jackson’s responses, the mayor said of the Sunpu-Opto deal that “… we didn’t have a template as to how to proceed. And so it was a little loose and sloppy in some areas.”
But he still doesn’t seem to get it – that this deal isn’t fixable. He still seems to think that Sunpu-Opto should get the contract, maybe in a different make-up.
And he seems to blame those who called him on the deal, which he himself describes as poorly done. Not encouraging.
Mayor Jackson says, “But the greatest advocates of change are the greatest defenders of the status quo. As we say on the street. Everybody talk a good game but nobody going to bust a grape.”
You can’t blame those who find serious fault in something even you cite as defective. And label that an inability to desire change. It doesn’t make sense.
He goes on to say “… the greatest advocates of change… are also the greatest defenders of the status quo.”
He wants it the way he wants it. Not the way it is.
No, Mr. Mayor. Those who are opposing this deal aren’t demanding the status quo. They’re demanding that you prove the city can benefit from what you want to do. You haven’t been able to do that.
But you stubbornly stick to the same sloppy deal maybe with a new twist or two. It won’t work. Or should I say, it shouldn’t work.
The interview is available here.
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.
He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.
One Response to “Roldo: Jackson Flubs National Interview Opportunity”
JS
Funny, Jackson’s “way” is the old way of doing things. Plus much of it is self contradictory gibberish.
About the most positive thing you could hope to read into whatever that was (and you really have to try) is the need for a fast track process. Were I an optimist, you might be able to guess that’s what was this botched deal was attempting.
Due diligence can be done quicker and produce good results. But you have to have a legitimate, transparent, process. Or you get just what happened — the status quo and its defenders (Namely Jackson, not the critics).
What I fault the critics for is not proposing a streamlined fast track process. That is why you people will be criticizing shady dealings for the next thirty years.