Roldo: Litt, Plain Dealer, MMPI Will Seek More Public Money

The cash kitty for MMPI has gone over the $100 million mark as of the end of June. MMPI will build and control the County Medical Mart and Convention Center.

The increased sales tax has now brought Cuyahoga County $100,869,497.79 in tax revenue. Almost all is committed to MMPI. The $100 million comes via a quarter percent increase in the general sales tax in Cuyahoga County. It was voted, of course, without consultation or vote of the residents. The County began collections January 2008.

Presently, the Plain Dealer, Steve Litt and MMPI are seeking to extend the tax – my reading of the PD stories on the Group Plan panel – to expand or extend the tax originally voted by the County Commission for development of the Medical Mart, a private business, and the Convention Center, under MMPI of Chicago.

The drum beating has begun. The panel is to advise on future development associated with the Med Mart. So a tax proposal will be following.

Will the lame duck County Commission do the dirty deed? Or will our new REFORM government show who runs the reform?

Cuyahoga County voters also have to worry about added taxes for parking garages to serve the convention complex and not far behind big subsidies for a new “Convention Center Sized” hotel. What spend $1 billion for a convention complex and leave it without a major hotel? That’s what the cry will be.

The Plain Dealer has been pushing – with Litt leading the cheerleading – a costly revamping of the historic Malls that will sit above the revamped convention center. The Convention center’s height will force at least Mall B to rise considerably.

These costly projects continue to be laid solely on taxes paid by Cuyahoga County taxpayers. (Of course, some people from beyond the county borders also pay but the general purchases by county residents represent the bulk of the payments.)

The Group Plan Commission, named by Mayor Frank Jackson, sounds as if it came straight from the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the corporate group responsible for seeing that taxes are levied by politicians on ordinary people and never anyone with wealth. Mayor Jackson simply gives it a governmental imprimatur. The Corporates control.

Litt says that the panel’s work needs attention “pronto.” Too late for that.

Litt says of the panel’s work: “An exciting vision could help the commission find new sources of cash, whether public or private.”

Litt has to be kidding. Private money? No way. It’s the taxpayer they’re after.

The membership of the panel alone should tell Litt that. They’re the kind of people who get others to pay for their desires.

Members include people as Cavs owner Dan Gilbert – who recently gave us a perfect show of a thuggish billionaire – Paul Dolan of the Cleveland Indians (Dolans are trying to elect one of their own as the new County chief), Forest City’s Al Ratner of the family that feeds our local politicians their campaign funds; And on and on with corporate allied members and their stooges.

I’d find it difficult to trust any one of the members.

In addition to the med mart taxes, taxpayers paid some $6.2 million this year as of the end of June to help Browns owner Randy Lerner. All told taxpayers have contributed $67 million to fund bonds for the 73,000 seat Browns Stadium, built by taxpayers and enjoyed by the Lerner family for $250,000 rent a year. The Browns Stadium tax began August 2005.

Cigarette smokers, smacked hard by the Browns tax as by previous Gateway taxes, have been hit for another $64.7 million in total for the arts & culture tax with some $9.6 million collected this year. The tax started February 2007.

Keep paying those taxes. Oh, by the way so far all the facilities and planned facilities are property tax free.

Shows you how we DO worry about the Cleveland school children who depend most heavily upon property tax revenue.

Go Cavs! Go Browns! Go Indians! Stay back schoolchildren!

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.