Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the Cuyahoga County transition thingy’s County Council planning thingy.  Chairing the meeting were Joanne Gross, who the PD recently identified as “special projects coordinator” at the county, and Tim Reynolds of Tribute Software in Hudson, a former head of COSE.  (By the way, why are all these people with companies based outside the county running the show?  Randy McShepard, who chairs the public engagement committee, runs a company in Medina County.  I digress.)

The meeting broke into two workgroups, one for contracting procedures for the council, another for rules & procedures of council, which I sat in on, given I’m a candidate for the council.  Several candidates and potential candidates for council were there, I wasn’t the only one.  I guess we’re all curious about this…er…thingy.

Angela Shuckahosee, who works for Cleveland City Council president Marty Sweeney, presented an offer from students at the Levin College at CSU to do research on issues of interest to the council planning committee, which was a very cool idea.  Discussion ensued, a little of this, a little of that….

Then things got interesting.

Inevitably, volunteers started focusing on issues of balance of power between the council and the executive.  Joanne Gross announced that “we do have legal assistance” on the topic, from the guy who penned the charter itself, Eugene Kramer, who would “deal with legislative authority questions”, which advice would not be made public, and that the topic was not in this “workgroup’s” remit.  My ears perked up on that one.

So I started asking questions about the sunshine laws, and again, just as at the public engagement committee meeting yesterday, both Reynolds and Grosse declared that they consider the body we were meeting under a “non-governmental” body.  I noted that the county’s own attorney, Prosecutor Bill Mason, has declared these meetings subject to Ohio sunshine laws, and thus governmental.  (The ACLU observer started taking notes WAY faster at that point!)  Reynolds and Grosse said they weren’t aware of this legal advice, and even said that it is still the opinion of the transition advisory group (Jim McCafferty, Martin Zanotti, and Joe Nanni) that this entire process is non-governmental.  Huh.  I then asked if either of them were trained in public records retention, they answered no, which is odd, given that Joann Gross is actually a county employee.

At this point I decided that this entire process is no longer worth my time.

Even if I assume this process to be what its defenders incompetently claim it to be, here’s the thing.  There will be an election. After that election, it will simply not matter what Eugene Kramer secretly advises on “legislative authority questions”, whether or not Joanne Gross was trained in public records retention, whether or not Tim Reynolds’ company in another county has any involvement, whether or not a PR firm is hired to sell this giant reeking pile of dung, whether or not the “recommendations” of this farce of a transition are written on antique parchment with a quill pen, or on the toilet paper they deserve to be written on.

The elected members of this new council will decide every one of those questions.  So I plan to spend my time more wisely, with my voters, and find out what they want their councilor to do.

Tags: cose, cuyahoga transition, joanne gross, tim reynolds, tribute

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 8:42 am and is filed under Transparency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.