Ed Morrison · A timid step

July 10th, 2009

Yesterday, Commissioners Jones and Hagan symbolically voted their colleague, Jimmy Dimora, off the island. With this single act, they are hoping to distance themselves from the culture of corruption that pervades Cuyahoga County.

It’s not so easy.

Corruption represents the misuse of public power for private profit. It flourishes with too much room for discretion by public officials combined with too much secrecy.

A strong sense of elitism prevails in public official’s minds as a consequence of their unexamined power. They enjoy determining the environment in which private business operates.

This arrogance leads them to believe that they are naturally privileged to receive the bribes offered, whether it is a free dinner, a trip to Las Vegas, or special renovations to their house. They become kingmakers in their own game, absorbed in a Disneyland of their own making. (Example: Hagan’s claim that the Med Mart will generate 50 medical shows a year, with no facts to back his claim. The number came from loose talk by MMPI when they first appeared in Cleveland. )

As BFD commentator John Polk has noted on several occasions, forget the public interest, its about using power to make the deal.
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(Dimora so eloquently stated in the recently released criminal information: “Oh what the f-k. I’m doin’ nothing, I’m trying to make calls, make a living, help my friends make more money than they already got.”)

It goes without saying that Cuyahoga County businesses, the bribery suppliers, are complicit. Lacking ethics, the business community sees nothing wrong with conspiring to violate a public trust for private profit.

Acting together, corrupt business executives and government officials allow these activities become a routine interaction between business and local government, a rutted pattern of tough guy talk. They define a culture of narcissistic power plays and self-dealing. This is what we have in Cuyahoga County today.

Eliminating this culture of corruption (Cleveland’s kleptocracy, as Polk describes it) will not be easy.

The problem is not Dimora. He was simply stupid enough to get caught on tape by the FBI. (Years ago, in Louisiana, a city councilman, Joe Shine, invited me to breakfast to protest his innocence before his indictment. Blankly, I stared back at him and told him he was fried, because the feds had tapes. Joe served something like 5 years.)

Cleveland is weighed down by the same culture of crony capitalism that sinks Louisiana. Abetted by the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the entire Board of Commissioners, this stubborn pattern of self-absorbed behavior eats away at the public’s confidence, so vital to sustainable economic development. A long string of oddball deals have been made largely without public scrutiny or vote: the Juvenile Justice Center, the Am Trust fiasco, and the shaky case for a Med Mart are only part of the list.

As the Plain Dealer has reported, the County Commissioners continue to rely too heavily on executive sessions to conduct their business. And too little public scrutiny follows the federal money that flows into the county.

(My chief candidate for more corruption: the public workforce system that has for years been neatly split between the Mayor and Dimora. In normal years, its a $15 million a year system within the county. With the stimulus, its easily over $20 million, twice what the Fund for Our Economic Future invests in the region.)

On the business side, a handful of real estate developers — Forest City chief among them — run roughshod over Cleveland’s politics and the Greater Cleveland Partnership. They have been happy to feed the beast, as long as they get something in return: like local public officials lining up behind Greater Cleveland Partnership’s goofy “Learn and Earn” casino proposal.

(Under its prior management, the Plain Dealer was a part of the silent conspiracy. They even — for a time — published a Forest City blog. With management changes at the paper, we are starting to see a different profile. Not surprisingly, Commissioner Hagan objects to this new activism.)

Hagan and Jones now claim they have no knowledge of the political culture which, by their actions, they have helped shape. Their performance yesterday brings forth another Nixon era concept: a credibility gap. (The first was Dimora’s statement last week that he was not a crook.)

The irony, of course, is that in their call of reform, commissioners Jones and Hagan (perhaps our two most capable local politicians) may be too late. Political insiders are already maneuvering to hijack this broken system and, in all probability, make it worse. By failing to speak out earlier and more clearly, Jones and Hagan have seriously compromised their position and damaged their credibility.

They need bold action to recover. Asking Dimora to step down for 60 days is not it.

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One Response to “A timid step”

  1. John Polk Says:
    July 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Where’s Batman when you need him?…

    I’m certain the entire civic “process” is in damage control mode. Just as members of a herd distance themselves from a wounded animal to avoid contending with predators and scavengers, Dimora is being cut out of the herd in the hope that that will limit the damage.

    It could. It’s worked before. One of the reasons Jane Campbell found when she took office that none of Mike White’s files were in place was that files were destroyed to limit the paper trail. So a couple flunkies who had been caught on FBI wiretaps took the fall, and the rest of the conspirators skated.

    Maybe that’s why the Feds hit targeted offices in such force…to keep similar shenanigans to a minimum.

    As the net closes around Public Officials 1 and 2, many people in and out of politics are waiting for the next shoes to drop. Because unlike, say, Nate Gray, who has quietly done his time (and will undoubtedly be well taken care of upon his release), it’s highly unlikely that PO’s 1 and 2 will NOT try very hard to take some of their co-conspirators down with them.

    I’m certainly in no position to pre-judge the County “reform” efforts, except for this: as long as the Men Behind The Curtain are able to avoid culpability for their role in corrupting public officials, then merely replacing one set of stooges with another set, however many, will not eliminate, or even slow down, the kleptocracy. They’ll just hand-pick and finance the NEXT group of shills.

    A former Congressman with whom I was friendly once said of campaign reform, “Everyone can agree on what’s against the law. It’s what’s LEGAL that’ll make you cry.”

    Unless a few very highly-placed people in our corporate and institutional hierarchy are subjected to public ridicule and censure for their roles in perpetuating the culture of corruption, no amount of shuffling of public offices will solve the problem.

    If the PD wants to take a break from shooting fish in a barrel, perhaps it should take the truly risky journalistic step of shedding some light not just on the corruption of public officials, but on those who have corrupted them. Legally or not.