This is one of the main attacks on Issue 6, delivered here by the AFL-CIO’s Harriet Applegate.
APPLEGATE: The big business Republican proposal creates an overly-powerful CEO, making the county more susceptible to corruption.
Big business, Republicans, and more corruption: three red flags in this heavily-Democratic county reeling from an ongoing FBI probe. Only problem is that leading defenders of Issue 6 don’t fit that bill. Democratic State Senator Nina Turner doesn’t and neither does Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti, who answered Applegate this way at a Cleveland State debate.
ZANOTTI: As a Democrat and a small business owner, I’m very pleased to be here with my fellow Democrat representing the Big Business Republican Plan.
Republicans were barely represented in the group that drew up the reform plan to switch to an elected county executive. Most involved were Democrats or independents.
True: the Cuyahoga County GOP has endorsed Issue 6, but they are under no illusions about it leading to a power grab. The county hasn’t elected a Republican commissioner since 1992.
Democrats win county and statewide elections here by huge margins. In 2006, for instance, Senator Sherrod Brown and Governor Ted Strickland got more than twice as many votes in Cuyahoga County as their Republican challengers.
Political consultants say the GOP would have some shot at 2 or 3 seats on the proposed 11-member county council, but no more.
So, this is really a fight about which Democrats will control Cuyahoga County. It pits more independent minded Dems like Zanotti, Turner and prosecutor Bill Mason against some of the biggest guns in the party establishment: Cleveland’s mayor, Congresspeople Dennis Kucinich and Marcia Fudge, and all of the current county commissioners.
Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and the others support Issue 5 – which calls for a year of study by an elected group before any changes are put to the voters. …but he does agree with Issue 6 supporters on one point.
JONES: Both sides favor reform. We know that we’re all works in progress, under construction, and we’re endeavoring to get and be better.
Jones’s side raises some serious concerns regarding Issue 6. They worry that the county executive would be too powerful, and that this form of government would lead to an over-emphasis on economic development at the expense of maintaining health and human services. And Jones says his side is being sincere when they say reform is needed, just later.
JONES: They have pledged, number one, to adhere to their constitutional requirement that they draft a charter. They have also pledged that over the next year they’ll host, throughout the county, public hearings where they can receive input from all the stakeholders. They have also pledged that the charter they produce will represent real reform.
But one reform veteran doesn’t buy it. Kathleen Barber chaired a committee in the mid-90s –dominated by Democrats—that proposed a county executive form of government…not dissimilar from the proposal contained in Issue 6 this year. However, the county commissioners at the time put the proposal on the shelf where it has sat ever since. Today, Barber is backing Issue 6 and says the Issue 5 crowd is being disingenuous.
BARBER: I think they’re against reform because what Issue 5 does is stretch it out for ever and ever and people will lose interest. If they ever had any, they’ll lose interest. It will just take too long. I mean, people don’t stay focused on a ballot issue for a year.
Many voters do seem to be interested in the issue right now. That’s due in no small part to the racially-charged underpinnings of this debate. More on race and county reform tomorrow.