Posts Tagged Goldberg
Cleveland Tax Should Be Progressive, But It Isn’t
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Politicians on January 5, 2010
January 5, 2010… Mayor Frank Jackson’s inaugural talk was uninspiring, tedious and lacking the very essence of what it said it was about – the future.
Jackson offered Clevelanders nothing.
We face consistent population loss and job market breakdown. The city’s outlook is dismal. Cleveland has fewer people though more poor people as a percentage of the shrinking population.
This is the situation for most Ohio cities.
But you don’t see the political leaders of the major cities getting together to find solutions. They should be a powerful political coalition.
However, they seem to be each drowning in a downward spiral.
They all need money to operate.
One solution to the problem of revenue is very, very simple.
Get it from those who have it instead of from those who don’t.
What a novel idea.
Jackson’s fee tax on garbage is an example of uninspired thinking. Same as his traffic lights as revenue raisers.
But those “solutions” are easier than a real answer.
How can cities raise more money? They have to get the Ohio legislators to pass authorization that allows the cities to tax on a progressive basis.
What a novel idea.
We cannot keep going to those who have less and least for more revenue. That has been the process with sales taxes and sin taxes, garbage and other fees, and traffic tickets.
What the cities need is a progressive payroll tax, not the income tax that now exists where everyone pays the same rate. For wealth people a 2 or 3 percent payroll tax isn’t a burden. For a family on a limited income, it is a burden. It’s a hardship.
Where is the politician who will sell this state-wide, among cities and their political leaders?
Why should LeBron James – just the use the name everyone knows – pay a 2 percent city income tax and Joe or Jane Jones, making minimum wage, also pay a 2 percent tax. On the first penny they make, too.
LeBron likely has more income that doesn’t pay the payroll tax than Joe or Jane Jones makes in 10 years. Is that fair? Is that wise?
Why shouldn’t people earning big bucks pay a higher than 2 percent tax? Why should someone making minimum wage even pay a payroll tax?
I know how much it hurts. I paid city income taxes when I made so little that I paid no federal income tax. So have many, many others.
When are urban centers going to take care of their people? When are their people going to demand it?
When are police, fire and other public employees – enduring layoffs, low pay and no raises – going to demand that those with high incomes pay a fair share? Why are they willing to give away money that should go to their families to the families of the richest among us?
The lack of concern by these public employees amazes me. Don’t they realize that tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are being given away to businesses whose owners are wealthy but pay city taxes at the same rate they do?
Here are the top ten cities in Ohio. I ask why aren’t the people and their representatives demanding fair taxation legislation that would relieve the financial crisis all these cities face:
Columbus 754,885
Cleveland 433,748
Cincinnati 333,336
Toledo 293,201
Akron 207,510
Dayton 154,200
Canton 78,362
Parma 77,947
Youngstown 72,925
Lorain 70,239
Don’t wait for the Plain Dealer to lead this fight. Their top people benefit richly from things as they are. This is the kind of corruption Terry Egger and Susan Goldberg don’t – won’t – see.
This isn’t a reform they would favor.
Plain Dealer Doesn’t Want to be Pain Dealer
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on December 1, 2009
December 1, 2009… The Plain Dealer is playing games with us about “Progress.” The paper wants to make us feel good. So Good News makes for good Page One copy. It also makes for misleading information.
It’s important to keep Progress reality-based. If you raise expectations too high and don’t produce, you have a problem. Ask Barack Obama.
It can discourage people in the end. More than they are already.
Once again we have it in a piece this past Sunday emblazoned across Page One: “Revival continues despite recession.” Oh, hope!
It links the new HealthLine – RTA’s new bus line from Public Square to University Circle – as the impetus for active development at both ends and in between the two destinations.
Two Page One articles proclaim Progress to support the newspaper’s revival theme. Two facing-pages inside the paper are dominated by a route map of the $200 million HealthLine.
The map’s graphics define projects along and about the HealthLine.
The strong intimation, if not declaration, credits the HealthLine as the impetus for this economic development.
If you take a look at what the PD is crediting to the development of RTA’s HealthLine you find it very misleading.
It’s a laundry list of projects from Public Square to University Circle. The price tag is $3.3 billion.
However, much of it isn’t private investment. It is either governmental or nonprofit construction and much of it planned, not a done deal.
The largest investment derives from various projects of the Cleveland Clinic at some $793 million. Similarly, University Hospital has a projected development of $410 million. The Stokes VA Medical Center has a $539 million projected cost. The Cleveland Museum of Art expansion involves $350 million.
Those projects do not owe their being to a new transit line. And they total more $2 billion of the projected $3.3 billion.
Cleveland State University’s projects total some $200 million.
You may have noticed also that these projects involve institutions that don’t pay the city any property taxes.
A major, accomplished development is East 4th Street at $115 million. But this also has heavy government financing. And involves property tax abatements.
The mention of E. 4th brings up another major defect in this kind of rah rah reporting: Opposite E. 4th is The Arcade, a heavily-subsidized renovation on Euclid Avenue, which is severely depressed.
If you are going to assess what’s happening economically along the HealthLine route you have to look at what is failing along with what may be succeeding. The Arcade represents a historic and critical retail link between Euclid and Superior Avenues.
One of the articles made a dubious claim of a great hike in ridership on the HealthLine compared to the former ridership.
“The innovations are working for the most part. Ridership on the HealthLine is up 47 percent over the old No. 6 line along Euclid Avenue, formerly the most heavily used line in the RTA system,” wrote Steve Litt, the PD’s architecture critic.
He goes on to say that the HealthLine had 3.8 million riders compared to 2.6 million for the old system’s No. 6 line down Euclid Avenue. (A RTA spokesperson told me that the 3.8 million is a projected ridership figure for 2009.)
However, Litt counted only the No. 6 bus route. Last year, according to RTA, it ran the No. 7 and No. 9 buses along this route. The figures for them tell another story. They were 267,631 riders on No. 7 and 951,369 riders on No 9 for a total of 1,218,940 riders last year.
The No. 6 had 2.6 million riders. However, the No. 7 & 9 buses – both in operation last year – had another 1.2 million riders. If you add them to the No. 6 route you get some 3.8 million, or just about the same ridership this year as last year. No dramatic jump of 47 percent.
There goes another rubber tree plant, as Frank Sinatra used to sing.
Actually, there were two other bus routes, a variation of No. 7 and No. 9 that didn’t run along Euclid last year. In 2000, they accounted for more than 150,000 other rides.
So maybe ridership along Euclid Avenue is really down.
Maybe also The Plain Dealer is getting too Pollyannaish. Too ready to see a silver lining.
This is now policy at the PD. Give us BIG. The newspaper under Editor Susan Goldberg has become a paper of headlines. Give us BIG headlines. Give us LARGE photos. Give us BOLD headlines. Make people believe that we are reporting HARD stuff. It’s magical stuff. Now you see it, now you don’t.
We’ve had similar ballyhooing of projects that don’t seem to blossom. In July of 2008, it was “A resurgence at East Ninth Street” on the PD’s Page One. That one highlighted the Ameritrust Tower to support the headline. Didn’t happen. In fact, it’s a terrible blight on Euclid Avenue. At a crossroad that was the city’s financial center.
We’ve seen lots of renderings of the Flats East Bank. But the Flats remains substantially, well, flat. Nothing.
And University Circle, development stories seem to make it to the PD time and time again. The same ones. Yet, the private developments don’t seem to materialize.
We allow that the economy has something to do with this. However, we suggest that people who want their projects to get attention don’t have to haggle much to get the “news” on the front page of the PD.
The paper is accommodating. Even when it doesn’t know whether the projects are real or not.
Too much wishful thinking is going on. It doesn’t need encouragement from the daily newspaper.
Yet it sells papers. Must be so. Because they keep on using it. But does it do what newspapers are supposed to do? Inform us. Not titillate us. Not uplift our spirits. Not get us feeling good. Tell us the truth.
Let’s have a bit of reality. In the end it may save us. If nothing else, the embarrassment of failure.