Posts Tagged Susan Goldberg
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.
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.