This archive article is selected from The Cleveland Pages, the city's only weekly independent journal of politics and opinion on the Internet. Find out all about the Cleveland Pages here, or check out the current issue.
The Free Times, in an article no longer online, called Cleveland Pages "Spicily independent... in the best tradition of citizen-journalist."
The Cleveland Pages is a somewhat-weekly commentary on what's new and why it's all happening in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. If what you read here is upsetting, you might prefer this simple-minded happy-talk instead.
Bookmark the Cleveland Pages at http://re.cleveland.oh.us. Bookmark this issue at http://re.cleveland.oh.us/archives/20000707.html.
A Cleveland Pages archive search will be available soon... Meanwhile, skip to the flat-file archive list! And read an overview of who's putting this thing out and what it's about.
As long as deficits accumulate at the Gateway downtown sports complex and the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County are still on the hook for them, we might as well point fingers at those responsible for the mess. But there are so many of them it's hard to know where to start.
The Plain Dealer editorialized this year and last about routine maintenance items at the Gund Arena that George and Gordon Gund's Cavaliers are charging back to the "public-private" Gateway as capital expenses. Because of these items, the Cavs organization has never actually had to write a check to pay rent at the arena; in fact, the Gunds' people now claim that the taxpayers, through the Gateway corporation, owe them an accumulated $3.1 million for the privilege, about $800,000 of it in the last year. That's crazy and unfair on the face of it, and the Dealer is right in saying so.
In this week's Free Times, however, Roldo Bartimole complains that the Dealer is still "pulling punches", that by not mentioning him by name they're going easy on the owners of the Cavaliers and Indians sports franchises.
How much does it really matter? The personal fortunes of the Gund brothers aren't subject to public opinion. Reputation may be everything to the wealthy, but it's not the kind you get in the media. Call them whatever you want, theirs is still one of the county's two largest welfare cases.
And those dollars--the general-fund subsidies we taxpayers underwrite year after year to keep Gateway technically afloat--aren't the fault of the Gund brothers. They're supposed to ask for free money. If they don't, someone less scrupulous will.
It's not the asking for handouts that's wrong. It's the giving of them, by politicians, at our expense.
That's where Roldo and I consistently disagree. I don't blame Indians owner Dick Jacobs for being Dick Jacobs, or the Gunds for doing what they do. They didn't take oaths to serve the public. If the Gateway leases are crooked, then the crooks are the Gateway board members who agreed to those leases, and the county commissioners and mayor who appointed them.
Former Council member Helen Smith now writes about Gateway's $8 million annual taxpayer-funded deficit as an outsider; but she was there when the Gateway project was conceived, supported the board members who signed off on the sweetheart leases, and campaigned for the new taxes that made it all possible. As did every other warm body on the Council. Not one of the twenty-one had both the intelligence to see a half-billion-dollar scandal in the making and the integrity to call it.
The problem at Gateway is not about the definition of light bulbs as a "maintenance" or a "capital" item. The problem is in badly-written leases that leave the definition open to interpretation, without any guidance or arbitration procedure. One lease that generates rent on the stadium only in near-sellout conditions, and another that offers use of the arena almost as cheaply.
And that is the fault of Tom Chema, the second-rate lawyer who made it all up as he want along while serving as Gateway's Executive Director, back in the days when certain people still believed some of what he said. Chema got there through appointment by a rubber-stamp board which in turn was ppointed by city and county officials who couldn't tear their eyes away from the money, glitter, and glamor of a BIG! NEW! TOURIST! PROJECT!
Now my eyes are on the increasing tax bill for my house... which is paying for the stupidity, mismanagment, and greed of elected officials who should have known better.
Never mind going after Dick Jacobs and the Gunds. They already have everything they asked for. The media geniuses who hyped the project's fake financial and employment projections are partly responsible, too, but no intelligent person believed that stuff to begin with.
The real villians in this drama are the elected fools--many of whom are now out of office and criticizing Gateway after the fact--who abused the public's trust by making long-term, open-ended financial commitments that they didn't fully understand. With our money.
This document's template was last modified on Wednesday, 09-Nov-2005 18:51:58 EST. There is a new Cleveland Pages more or less every weekend. The entire Cleveland Pages website is © 1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003 by Mark W. Schumann, all rights reserved. Copyrights belonging to others on individual items are noted. Nobody else would take the credit or blame for these opinions anyway.
Go to the front page
Last validated 7 July 2000:
![[ Valid HTML 4.0! ]](/images/vh40.gif){kind=small}
![[ Valid CSS! ]](/images/vcss.gif){kind=small}
![[ Bobby Approved! ]](/images/approved.gif){kind=small}
![[ Made with Cascading Style Sheets]](/images/mwcts.gif)
The W3C validator verifies that documents on this site conform to the Strict HTML 4.01 specification, which is a step towards consistency, accessibility, and interoperability.
Bobby checks for opportunities to improve access for users regardless of disabilities or special needs.