Ed Morrison · Toward more effective government in Cuyahoga County?

June 24th, 2008

From John Carey, chair of the Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee: “In addition, to address concerns from some local and state officials about inefficiency in Cuyahoga County government, the conference committee adopted an amendment to establish a nine-member commission charged with developing recommendations for how the county can better organize its government structure to improve effectiveness and reduce waste. The group’s findings, which would be put before the county’s voters for approval, are due to the General Assembly by November.”

Important legislation moves ahead

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Category: Economic Development
4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Toward more effective government in Cuyahoga County?”

  1. J Murray Says:
    June 24th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    Good move!

  2. Ed Morrison Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    To anchor its work, the panel might consider this outcome: driving Cuyahoga County’s government employment per capita to average national levels by 2012.

  3. J Murray Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    If they really want to make the national news scene, and contribute productively to company attraction, they should also do a noisy, splashy tax reduction to coincide with the slashing of featherbedding and patronage jobs.

  4. Ed Morrison Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Jonathan:

    A better incentive, I think, would be to negotiate with the Clinic, Metro and UH to offer free/dramatically reduced health care for start-ups in Cleveland. Give JumpStart and BioE a “budget” of health care slots, if you like, that JS and BioE could “invest” in promising companies.

    So, for example, negotiate with the three providers to create 300 free health care slots. Dole them out: 100 to the Clinic, 100 to Metro; 100 to UH. All three have their exposure capped.

    This approach would 1) attract national attention; 2) highlight our strength in health care; 3) strengthen real estate around these health care anchors. (Target som hot spot locations, for example, like Midtown.)

    It would also not cost the City, County or the health care providers much. (Start-ups typically employ young people with low demands on the health care system).

    Of course, coming up with something like this requires some imagination, and there’s the rub.

    Frankly, I do not expect much from a City and County leadership that thinks a convention center and a med mart are worthy investments of public funds.

    Our leadership is obsessed with thirty year old ideas that do not work very well. They are sadly caught in the wrong century.