JACKSON SHOWS HIMSELF A CONVENTIONAL CLEVELAND MAYOR

One day after winning victory by a large margin, Mayor Frank Jackson showed he’s a conventional Cleveland Mayor by offering Jeff Jacobs $2 million gift.

 

Giving gifts to downtown developers has been a bad habit for Cleveland politicians.

 

Particularly when you can see Cleveland neighborhoods fester and die before our eyes.

 

But keep the payoffs coming, Cleveland mayors.

 

Cleveland mayors since Dennis Kucinich have been corporate mayors, providing subsidies to Cleveland’s wealthiest.

 

The list goes far beyond the hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

Jackson will ask City Council to provide Jacobs Investments, Inc. (investment with public funds apparently) with $2-million for an aquarium.

 

Public scrutiny is so short-sighted that the Plain Dealer article by Gabriel Baird doesn’t even answer the question: Where does this $2-million come from? Pocket change?

 

My suspicion is that it comes from UDAG paybacks. In other words, money loaned to developers, typically at zero or very low interest rates, and paid back after many years. This is money that could and should be spent in the city’s crumbling neighborhoods.

 

It’s been the practice of mayors – and apparently Jackson, advertised as a neighborhood mayor – to give the money right back to developers instead of investing it finally in the neighborhoods.

 

The “aquarium” will be within Jacobs’s private Powerhouse complex.

 

Now nice that the public pay for this as if it were a public investment.

 

If opponent Bill Patmon expects to get more than his 11 percent vote he’s going to have to examine Jackson’s record of being the same old give-away mayor and hit him hard.

 

Patmon should refuse to take any campaign contributions from Jacobs, from the Ratners and Sam Miller or any other downtown developer and challenge Jackson to do the same. Both should return any money they’ve receive from these tainted sources.

 

All corruption isn’t the illegal kind.

 

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NOTE: Yesterday when I talked of Jackson’s error in allowing the Cleveland Cavaliers to move its practice facility to Independence and thus lose income tax revenue from the players, a friend wrote that it required more explanation.

 

The fact is that Cleveland has subsidized Dan Gilbert’s team by helping build Q (formerly Gund) Arena – where practice facilities were built-in – helped build a parking garage, which provides significant parking free to the team, and relinquish all property taxes worth tens of millions of dollars on the arena.

 

It should get all possible revenue from the team and its owners for those significant investments.

 

Essentially, Jackson gave away half of the revenues without a fight. James LeBron’s alone would help Cleveland.

 

Having made these substantial subsidies for the team owners (the garage will cost Cleveland some $70 million in subsidies under the Cavs’ arena lease), Jackson allowed them to escape. Now, income tax revenue from the players to go to Independence, as I remember it, on an even basis. In other words, Jackson gave away half of the payroll tax of the Cavs to go to Independence. He got nothing in return.

 

Cleveland can’t afford that kind of kindness to others.

 

This was a bad deal. Worse, it suggests a state-of-mind Cleveland couldn’t afford in the past. Now it’s just a disastrous policy.