Posts Tagged Garofoli
It’s Fair Taxes for Honest City Revenue, Stupid
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, People, Politicians on November 12, 2009
November 12, 2009… I haven’t read the 300-page-plus consulting report on management and efficiency of Cleveland government and I probably won’t. I’ll leave it to others. I know it won’t touch the one revenue source that Cleveland should tap if it had any concern for its citizens. It is out of the question. Won’t happen.
The so-called city income tax – the city’s largest revenue source by far – is really a payroll tax. It’s a tax on your wage income. It’s a regressive tax that takes from the first dollar someone earns. It’s a tax that hits people so poor that they don’t pay federal income taxes but must pay this tax. The feds at least tax somewhat progressively though the rich still get away with tax robbery.
If we really wanted a fair tax the so-called city income tax would be progressive. In other words, the guy who makes $150 a week would pay far less proportionally than the guy who makes $150 or $500 a day, or more.
It’s an obvious source of more revenue for cities. But it’s ignored. Why? Because wealthy people decide who gets taxed and by how much.
It’s legal theft calculatedly devised by professional hired thugs. Sometimes called lawyers or legislators.
Cleveland residents pay 2 percent on their earnings. If they work outside Cleveland and pay in the work community they may reduce the Cleveland tax by one-half, up to 1 percent. So, in other words, if they work in another city aside Cleveland they pay the 2 percent to the work community but get a half off Cleveland’s 2 percent.
So they pay 3 percent total. Someone who makes a lousy $10,000 has to fork over $300 to the city. That’s a paycheck and a half a week. A lot of money to a low income working stiff.
That’s a lot of money right off the top. No deductions. You pay on dollar number one. The city doesn’t care if you have heavy medical bills or other hefty expenses. Pay up. Now. In fact, before you take your pay home.
So it’s obvious if local government wants to raise revenue it should not go to unnecessary fees – increased sales taxes, catching people on minor traffic infraction and charging $100. THEY SHOULD GO WHERE THE MONEY IS. But they can’t seem to find the path.
Oh, that would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Taxing people with money. Outrageous.
- When the County Commissioners – Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones (who didn’t vote for it but has gone along, as usual, for the ride) – wanted to raise big money for a medical mart and convention center, they didn’t go where the big money people live, but went to the small money people. They increased the most regressive of taxes – a one-quarter percent sales tax hike. It has raised $74 million as of last month.
It hits the little people hardest. Another quarter-percent to someone making $100,000, or $400,000 as Joe Roman at Greater Cleveland Partnership does, means nothing to them. But the pennies to someone trying to get by, that can add up to pain. Sometimes more pain than they can take.
- When Cuyahoga County, led by Hagan the Great White Liberal, wanted to raise funds for Gateway it didn’t go to those who HAVE money but to more sales taxes, so-called sin taxes on beer, cigarettes, wine and alcohol. And most heavily on cigarettes and beer. Plus, they charge sales tax on the sin tax!
- When the city wanted to build Browns Stadium, Mayor White, the African-American liberal, came up with an 8 percent parking tax, added 2 percent admission tax, increased the tax on car rentals, and best of all, added a 10-year extension of the sin taxes ($58 million collected as of last month).
This is FAR greater a mugging than anything stolen by the political thieves now being pursued by the FBI. I wish they could go after the legal thievery. That’s where the real money is.
But it passes without even a hint that a robbery is in progress.
In fact, The Plain Dealer promotes and propagandizes for these taxes without a hesitation or demands for an examination of other ways to pay for these projects. Unfortunately, the Pee Dee is the only major source of information for the public. That’s why it is so central to the ills we see.
So the public is essentially in the dark.
As an example, I wrote in 1995 when Council addressed the football stadium taxes, “The day council debated this issue for seven plus hours NOT ONE SINGLE MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC was present in the room.”
It’s not the first time. We have so little real citizenship here that it is no wonder that government is so bad.
But as usual the people who feed off government were much in attendance. I wrote: “The lineup was impressive. Tony Garofoli of Climaco, Climaco, Seminatore, Leftkowitz, told council what a good deal the legislation was. Garofoli, in this scheme, is the best representative for the city. After all, he had negotiated the Gateway leases at the stadium and the arena, both sweetheart deals for the team owners, and he had negotiated the sweetheart lease for Figgie (Chagrin Highlands), now in court… He’s got the perfect record of selling the citizen interests out.”
Who else was there?
“There was Joe Roman, executive director of Cleveland Tomorrow (now Greater Cleveland Partnership), the tail that wags city government. (He) had an entourage of professionals, including Bob Dykes, a political researcher and pollsters popular at city hall; Andy Juniewicz of Wm. Silverman, politically popular public relations firm, and testifying to what a good deal the city had before it was CT member and member of the mayor’s task force, Paul Carleton, managing director of Carleton, McCreary, Holmes, another investment firm.
“Tim Offtermatt, former chief financial officer at Gateway (certainly a qualification for another smelly deal), now with A. G. Edwards, a broker and public finance firm, was there, along with Alan Baucco of the firm. The financial data presented was worked up by Paul Komlosi of McDonald & Co., so you can expect that firm to be part of the deal.
“All the pros were there for their bite of the apple.”
So the average guy doesn’t stand a chance here or in Washington, D. C. because he’s absent in the decision-making.
But there should be no crisis in government funding – here or nationally – if only the rich are taxed fairly.
Can we make that happen? Just a little bit. A city income tax with a graduated tax to slightly even the score.
It would take Ms. Susan Goldberg and Mr. Terry Egger to use their front page headlines in the manner of selling Issue 6 to do that. Can we expect it? Tell me.
Brent Larkin Bows Out as Plain Dealer Editorial Boss
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Media, People on June 3, 2009
June 1, 2009… Brent Larkin is receiving some deserved attention as he leaves one of the most powerful positions in our city – the Plain Dealer editorial page director.
We can’t allow him to leave the stage so easily.
Larkin – likable and knowledgeable – has been boss of the editorial page since the early 1990s. He had wanted to be the PD’s sports editor at the time he was given this crucial and powerful job.
Here’s how someone who worked with him at the time described him:
“I think there is little question that Brent had the institutional memory of the PD and editorial board. Plus, Brent remained a reporter even as editorial director. He broke more stories than anyone in the news room. Brent works the phone like no one I know. They joked about him having two phones in his ear.”
He was a political junkie.
I have to say that I liked Larkin personally. I thought him to be an honest and hard-working reporter with the Cleveland Press.
The Press had a different culture than the Plain Dealer. It was more a people’s paper. More free swinging than the staid, self-important Pee Dee.
Larkin started, as he said in his farewell in Sunday’s paper, as the Press city hall reporter during the frenzied Kucinich administration in the late 1970s. The Press treated Kucinich more fairly (well, even handedly, let’s say) than did the Plain Dealer.
Despite his likability, I have had problems with Larkin over the years.
He played politics himself. He sometimes used his position to help friends.
Here from a piece in my newsletter, Point of View, in October, 1995:
“Larkin has used his position to help friends before. He bashed the United Auto Workers on the union’s attempt to have a workmen’s compensation law tested in the courts. Some believe Larkin’s tirade was really an attack for the UAW’s opposition on a Blue Cross matter. Blue Cross is represented by Climaco, Climaco, Seminatore, Leftkowitz and Garofoli, which gets some $6 million a year in fees from Blue Cross.
“Larkin has a close friendship at the Climaco firm that makes some wonder how close. At another time, Larkin wrote a strong and strategically timed editorial supporting the Blue Cross of Cleveland’s take-over of the Cincinnati Blue Cross without the usual editorial staff discussion of the matter.”
Larkin, in an interview on the PD website Cleveland.com, said, in answer to a question about his political leaning, that he’s “this much” left of center. He used his fingers to show almost no room between them.
However, shortly after he took his position in 1993, Larkin dumped the PD’s editorial writer on national politics, Chris Colford, a liberal editorialist.
Here’s what I wrote:
“He told Colford, a prize winner, that he would be shifted to write about environment, energy, science and the arts. But that was just step one.
“Larkin, who lacks skill in dealing with people, then offered a shocked Colford a buyout in an attempt designed to usher him out the door rather than just shift his duties.”
The “buyout” got revised to an “exit bonus” after Colford went to the Newspaper Guild for advice.
I went on: “Colford, a rather gentle, thoughtful writer who loves his job, apparently has no place in a Larkin editorial staff. One veteran reporter called the move an ‘ideological’ one to get rid of a liberal voice.”
A retirement party at the PD gave hints of Larkin’s powerful position.
A number of politicians made appearances including George Forbes, Lou Stokes, both former Republican chairman Roger Synenberg and his wife, Joan Synenberg, who owes her election to Larkin’s editorials against her opponent. Even Forest City’s Sam Miller was there, I was told. Others, as Commissioner Tim Hagan, appeared in a video done for Larkin, according to a PD reporter.
Larkin played a protector role for many political and private figures.
The PD can be critical of how badly events go in Cleveland. Most criticism is aimed at politicians, who really dance to the tunes of the corporate leaders, who receive little, if any, censure.
Of course, the newspaper itself never enters the realm of self-criticism. Editorially, it keeps itself off limits. Even though it plays a key part of community decision-making – usually leading the way – for the dominate forces in the city and area.
Larkin’s most embarrassing revelation was the exposure of a trip he took on Dick Jacobs’ private airplane to Major League Baseball’s All-Star game in 1999. The plane was loaded with the city’s political and business leaders.
Here is how I described it:
“Well, we finally got them all in one boat, er, airplane.
“Playful Dick Jacobs. Was that the multi-millionaire with a large handkerchief over his face, blowing his nose? No, that’s the wealthy developer and owner of the Cleveland Indians… with a white cloth playing a Ku Klux Klansman…
“And who’s that see-no-evil, hear-no-evil and especially tell-no-evil Jacobs’ buddy? Why it’s Brent ‘Look Away’ Larkin, director of editorials for the Pee Dee. What better place for someone who has blinded himself to the inadequacies of political and business leaders in town. The user-friendly Larkin is quoted saying of Jacobs’ antics, ‘As far as I know, everybody got a kick out of it.’
“Now you have to remember that these are very sophisticated people. People whose community of interest calls for some flexibility by us of their righteousness.”
“This would only qualify as racism if someone with only a little money, little education and little power had made such a tasteless faux pas. For one it would be a crime; for the other it’s just a joke.”
It put Larkin in a conflicting position with top political and business leaders on a free trip to an all-star game. He should have been fired. But Editor Doug Clifton told me when I asked about punishment, “None given, none contemplated.”
The trip was revealed in an anonymous letter to a Plain Dealer columnist. My guess is that it was leaked by Mayor Michael White. Getting revenge on so many enemies must have been delicious for the mayor.
Larkin wrote when Gateway passed and made Jacobs even more of a multi-millionaire than he had been, “Now, do it right.”
He continued: “Negotiate fair leases with the Indians and the Cavaliers… Turning those promises into performance is the best way to make monkeys out of Gateway’s visceral opponents.”
However, the Larkin editorial page went easy as could be on Gateway as it sank deeper and deeper into debt and into the pockets of county taxpayers. No harsh criticism for his buddy Hagan or the rest of them.
That’s the way with big players. No criticism. No blame.
We suffer the consequences of this No Blame policy. We see the results all around us.