Kill It Dead Now!
By Roldo Bartimole
The attempt to add an assistant to each of the Cuyahoga County Council members is the first step in the creation of a new public Monster.
It should be cut off RIGHT NOW. Kill it dead.
It’s unfortunate that the very public officials who should be protecting the public are the ones trying to screw the public.
AND MORE IMPORTANT, the County Council members pushing for an assistant to their part-time jobs are giving government service a bad name. Just as the reappointment of Ken Johnson gave Cleveland Council a bad smell.
It’s no wonder that more conservative forces want to reduce government to the size that it can be put in a tub and drowned. They want to kill it. And you can see they sometimes have a point.
The attempt by Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell — whose husband is a Cleveland City Councilman, Kevin Conwell — has been pushing for an assistant to do her job. Maybe she got the idea from hubby. City Council — which has an unacceptable large staff — also has an assistant to each member.
What’s important to remember is that Cuyahoga County Council members already have a staff to do its grunt work. The County Council has budgeted 20 staff members for 2012. The Council budget actually has a $205,966 budget surplus as of its third quarter 2012 budget. It has one employee less than authorized, according to budget documents.
But what is most important is that the County has budgeted revenues of $352.4 million for this year (2013). It expects to spend $351.5 million. If you add health and welfare the County expects to reach $564.9 million.
If Council members aren’t savvy enough to find someone to solve a problem with a phone call, they shouldn’t be in that office.
IF THERE AREN’T ENOUGH EMPLOYEES IN A $564-MILLION BUDGET TO DO THE JOB THAN SOMETHING IS VERY, VERY WRONG ABOUT THE NEW REFORM GOVERNMENT.
And isn’t it time County Executive Ed Fitzgerald tell us he has enough money and workforce to do the job? Where is he hiding?
County Council members should learn to use County employees to solve problems that constituents send them.
The move for assistants is a power grab. Pure and simple.
Cleveland City Council members are now paid $76,259. It got that high because George Forbes played the same game of more, more and more. To ingratiate him with his fellow members — and keep his job — he had them pass legislation that gave Council members a 6 percent raise each year. EVERY YEAR. No matter how much other city employees got. (It was stopped and now they get the same raise as other city employees.) But the 6 percent built up their salaries. Council President, for example, gets $86,259. They also enjoy an assistant each at up to $45,000. So each City Council person costs more than up to $120,000.
The Cleveland Council also enjoys the services of another 22 staff employees, mostly at the heavy pay in the $70,000 range.
City Council members — in an effort to ingratiate themselves with voters — began to make people believe they were their problem solvers.
Then they moaned to me that they had so many problems dropped in their laps. They asked for them.
I’ll never forget an incident on Euclid Avenue. I was standing talking with Dennis Kucinich. Up walked a man and simply interrupted an ongoing conversation. He had a complaint about RTA. Dennis wasn’t even a Councilman at the time. He was in another position. The man then realized he shouldn’t be asking Dennis who had nothing to do with RTA. But Dennis — who had served in City Council for years and was indoctrinated with that “service” mentality — immediately told the man, No, no, you came to the right person and he, Dennis, would see to the problem.
This is an attitude that should not be allowed to root itself in the Cuyahoga Council. But it will, especially if you give it more staff.
The time to kill this move is Right Now.
Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
8 Responses to “ROLDO: Stop Cuyahoga County Council Move to Grow, Grow & Grow!”
Roldo Bartimole
Julian Rogers makes note for me that the 20 staffers listed
in the Council budget includes the actual Council members
so the body’s staff itself is eight. Thanks to him for the
correction.
Roldo
Joseph Nanni
I appreciate that there is a correction at the end of this artice as a comment. I do however believe you would be serving the reader better if you actually corrected the article itself. Council has only 8 staff. Not everyone reads the comments. Thank you.
Dick Peery
Roldo–It’s naive to believe that large bureaucracies respond to average citizens with no clout whenever they have a problem. Requests or complaints can be met or thrown in the wastebasket depending on the whims or fears of the paper shufflers. Officials elected at large have to only serve the people who have the weight to keep them in office while ignoring the rest.
The value of electing council persons from districts is that each resident has someone in government who is accountable to that person. If they fail in their ombudsman role, even the lowest ranking voter can take action against them. That’s why staff workers beholden to specific council members makes sense.
I learned this in the 1950s when I lived for a year in Detroit where all of the councilmen were elected at large. First I was in a low income area where the garbage was picked up about every three weeks in the hot summertime regardless of the swarms of rats. Then I moved to a middle class neighborhood and saw it picked up every week, even though no rats were apparent.
When I first came to Cleveland I was surprised when I drove through low income areas and saw that the streets were relatively clean with no piles of garbage. I finally understood when someone told me he saw a pile of trash fall off a truck and called his councilman, who quickly had it removed.
Lean, mean public bodies may work well for folks with some money, but for the most vulnerable, an individual who provides a gateway to government is necessary.
Roldo Bartimole
Dick – Thanks for your lengthy response and I agree that people need representation
but I watched Council closely for many years and know that they cultivated complaints
even as they complained about them. There is a need for representation and some
Council members are good at that job but there is also a Mayor’s Action center and
the various departments for problems.
More important, each city or town in the county has exactly that kind of representative
at the local level. Expanding that service to another level seems duplication of
government and not necessary
bob
CLEVELAND CITY CREW CULLED CUYAHOGA COUNTY CREW CUES UP..
bob
Hey…..
Roldo Bartimole
Paul, thanks. Every once in a while such words are encouraging.
Roldo
MAX
There are times that your insights are cogent and badly needed. But the relentlessly snide and accusatory tone seems over the top. It has always perplexed me how leftists can be so unforgiving and indignant with the petty – and sometimes large – failures of government and its officials, and yet so deeply committed to enlarging the scope and power of government. I think part of it is that you’ve only played the role of critic. Try running something some day; try having to answer for your views and actions for a minute and you may adopt a tad more civil tone.