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In a historic tie braking vote, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner voted to have the Cuyahoga Board of Elections enter into agreement with the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide additional voting access and accommodations for Puerto Rican voters residing in Cuyahoga County.

The actions come from over a year of investigations into the county’s adherence to the guarantees provided under the 1965 voting Rights Act (4.e.) to limited-English proficient voters who are U. S. citizens born in Puerto Rico.

The Board split on party lines with Republicans Rob Frost  and Jeff Hastings (Chairman) voting against the agreement and Democrats Sandy McNair and Inajo Davis Chappell voting for it.  Previous to the vote on entering onto the agreement, Rob Frost made a motion that was approved unanimously to take more limited actions immediately for the September and November elections.   Frost and Hastings wanted to take a more limited approach that would of sought to provide bilingual ballots only to precincts that by the census verification have a minimum of 100 Hispanic surnames.  The Department of Justice has argued that such an action would fail to meet the requirements of the law.

In terms of immediate actions – the Board has already prepared sample ballots that are available on-line and that will be available at a limited number of polling locations for the September and November elections.  For the November election the Board will prepare bilingual ballots for 71 precincts, primarily located in the City of Cleveland.

The agreement with the DOJ will require bilingual ballots be prepared for the entire county by May 2010.  Other requirements include: bilingual election materials; a Bilingual Election Program Coordinator and Spanish-Language Advisory Group; voter information promoted in the media in Spanish, as well as on the BOE’s web site and telephone message system; required hiring of additional bilingual election officials and poll workers; and, assignment of Federal election Oberservers for the duration of the agreement; (ending March 2014).

In testimony today it was stated that Cuyahoga County is the first county in Ohio to take such measures on behalf of Puerto Rican voters.  A similar case was cited for the City of Philadelphia in 2007.   Also mentioned at the meeting was a Plain Dealer report that the DOJ stated caught their attention in 2004 – see citation referenced below.

When commenting on the proceedings, Jose Feliciano  of the Hispanic Round Table stated that without the Justice Department’s actions the actions being taken currently would likely not have occurred.   Recent complaints about the DOJ’s short-notice demands were undermined by the DOJ’s claims of multiple requests for information over the past year specifically related to the 1965 law, section 4.e.  The point being that the BOE has had plenty of time to consider actions to get into compliance.  The agreement reached today with the help of Secretary of State Brunner will ensure that.

REF:

Cuyahoga county Board of Elections
Sample Bilingual Ballots(Spanish) 09/07/2010
Las Papeletas de Muestra Bilingüe (Español) 07/09/2010
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/spanishballots.aspx

• County Council District 2 (Cleveland Ward 18, Precinct E and G)
• County Council District 3 [except Cleveland 15P] (Cleveland Wards 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17)
• County Council District 4
• County Council District 7 (Cleveland Ward 3 and Precinct 8C)

Cuyahoga election board agrees to limited bilingual ballots this year, countywide use next year
Patrick O’Donnell, The Plain Dealer, Wednesday, September 01, 2010, 4:35 PM
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/09/cuyahoga_election_board_agrees.html

Voter groups fear Election Day chaos Area ‘hot spots’ show big rise in registrations
Plain Dealer, Olivera Perkins, Friday, October 22, 2004
[Available online via the Cleveland Public Library, Database – Plain Dealer search tool]
http://www.clevnet.org/databases.php?subjectID=16

United States v. City of Philadelphia, PA (E.D. Pa. 2007)
http://www.justice.gov/crt/voting/litigation/recent_sec2.php

This video is making the rounds of Chinese cancer researchers in Cleveland this week.




Detroit is moving on design as an economic development strategy:

Designing Detroit’s future

What’s the latest on Cleveland’s Design District?

In my earlier post, I told the story of how NEO missed an opportunity in 2006 by not focusing early on the emerging video game cluster.

With the strength of Cleveland Institute of Art, there still may be time to act.

Here’s another article on the video gaming software cluster…this time it’s Wisconsin.

Video gaming software development growing in Wisconsin

and Massachusetts

Study highlights game industry’s growing economic impact

and Texas

Study: Game industry added $490 million boost in Texas

and Utah

Entertainment software industry boosts Utah’s economic growth, report says

See also…

How Video Games Are Strengthening the U.S. Economy

Game industry pumps nearly $5 billion into GDP

Gaming industry booms despite sagging economy

Here’s the report on video games in the 21st century. The 2010 report concludes that:

The US computer and video game software publishing industry directly employs more than 32,000 people in 34 states.

The total US employment, both direct and indirect that depends on game software now exceeds 120,000.

For the four-year period 2005 through 2009, direct employment in the US computer and video game software publishing industry grew at an annual rate of 8.65%.

The US computer and video game software industry’s value added to US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $4.9 billion.

The real annual growth rate of the US computer and video game software industry was 10.6% for the period 2005-2009 and 16.7% for the period 2005-2008.

During the same periods, real growth for the US economy as a whole was 1.4% for 2005-09 and 2.8% for 2005-08.


Video Games in the 21st Century (2010)


Tom Breckenridge reports on NorTech’s energy strategy:
NorTech pushing for advanced-energy industry growth in Northeast Ohio

“The way we produce and consume energy will change dramatically and new technologies will emerge to enable that,” said Richard Stuebi, an energy expert on loan to NorTech’s Energy Enterprise from the Cleveland Foundation. “By most people’s reckoning, it will be the biggest economic opportunity in the next 50 years. We need to get our fair share of the opportunity so we can rebound economically.”

It’s important to keep focused on NorTech’s clean energy strategy. The history of NorTech is filled with “on again, off again” action plans and empty strategy documents.

Let’s hope that with new leadership, NorTech will stay focused.

And what about investment priorities? Is this NorTech’s new focus on renewable energy clusters more important than MedMart?

If you have a tough time answering that one, check out this report, released last week, on the potential for clean energy in Texas:
Report: Going green could create thousands of Texas jobs

Here’s the Texas report:

Texas Clean Energy Economy Report August 2010

Last week, Southern governors also focused on the potential:
The South can rise with clean energy
Here is the policy brief:

Renewable Energy in the South Policy Brief


Mentor Technology Greenhouse

10 people who are CHANGING MILWAUKEE

What’s interesting about the list is the diversity of people involved.

Key’s commitment to downtown.

Learn more here.

Looks like Key’s new space will be sitting on top of a Harrah’s casino. There’s probably some logic to this urban plan, but it escapes me.

On Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced details of the Seattle Jobs Plan, a vision for next-generation economic development in Seattle and the Puget Sound region. The plan consists of a framework of new and existing policies, programs, engagement strategies, and investments that McGinn hopes will help create quality jobs, protect the environment, and provide for more open, transparent government.


Seattle Jobs Plan 2010





Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web — building a “social layer” on top of the real world.

At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch presented the next layer in progress: the “game layer,” a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce.

A number of years ago, a group of us, including David Demming, Michael DeAlioa and David Moss, tried to get NorTech and others to understand that Cleveland — with the Institute of Art — had an early start in gaming, and that we should build on this advantage. CIA launched an incubator, Future. I-Open, a non-profit spin-out that formed after the Weatherhead School shut down the Center for Regional Economic Issues, even held a couple of DeFrag conferences to connect resources from throughout the state to Cleveland.

Most of this has disappeared from the web. All I could find was a 2006 story on the CIA web site. Nothing much happened. Cleveland’s top-down mindsets and relative inability to build collaborative enterprises carries real consequences in lost opportunities.

Maybe now, with new leadership at NorTech, there’s still an opportunity. Others have already seen it:
Georgia a hotspot in video game development

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Addendum:

Rhode Island recently launched a strategy to build a cluster of interactive game companies. As part of that effort, Well Fargo Securities prepared a report. Here’s one slide on the market opportunity:

Here’s a presentation made to the RI Economic Development Corporation on the cluster.


Game Cluster Report for Rhode Island