The Observation Deck

While watching the news coming out of New York and Washington this week I could not help but look back and think about the same thing going on here in Lakewood, but at a snail's pace. While the courts gave Donald Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen 30 days to go through all of the documents the seized and find out what really falls under "Attorney Client Privileges" here in Lakewood the Law Director is under not time limit to go through the hundreds of documents related to the Hospital Debacle and the city's claim of "Attorney Client Privileges."

In the Michael Cohen case less than 1% of the million of documents that were seized have fallen under "Attorney Client Privileges" but the majority were sorted through in under 30 days. Here in Lakewood it has taken nearly a year to go through hundreds of pages. The difference is that Lakewood is in Civil Court and Michael Cohen is in criminal court.

This could be sped up if ANY of the council people that ran on "Honesty, Transparency, and Accountability" asked for the documents, but as of this writing it would seem most if not all were merely desperately looking for bullet points for campaign literature instead of actually meaning it.

Lakewood Hospital is slated to be torn down in September, to my knowledge no one is fighting that decision any longer. The new Family Health Center due to open in less than 30 days. To my knowledge no one is fighting that. Three Arches is eagerly awaiting their new office space in One Lakewood alongside a couple other businesses that have still not committed to the multi-use strip mall. I know of no one fighting that. Healthy Lakewood has found a board, and getting ready to start handing out the hundreds or thousands of dollars netted from the liquidation of the community owned $200 million dollars asset. Which our return is literally pennies on the dollars. And to my knowledge no one is fighting that.

However City Hall is still fighting the right of Lakewood residents to understand what happened and look at documents that every court has ruled are public.

What is City Hall hiding, and just how bad is it?

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Jim O'Bryan wrote:While watching the news coming out of New York and Washington this week I could not help but look back and think about the same thing going on here in Lakewood, but at a snail's pace. While the courts gave Donald Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen 30 days to go through all of the documents the seized and find out what really falls under "Attorney Client Privileges" here in Lakewood the Law Director is under not time limit to go through the hundreds of documents related to the Hospital Debacle and the city's claim of "Attorney Client Privileges."

In the Michael Cohen case less than 1% of the million of documents that were seized have fallen under "Attorney Client Privileges" but the majority were sorted through in under 30 days. Here in Lakewood it has taken nearly a year to go through hundreds of pages. The difference is that Lakewood is in Civil Court and Michael Cohen is in criminal court.

This could be sped up if ANY of the council people that ran on "Honesty, Transparency, and Accountability" asked for the documents, but as of this writing it would seem most if not all were merely desperately looking for bullet points for campaign literature instead of actually meaning it.

Lakewood Hospital is slated to be torn down in September, to my knowledge no one is fighting that decision any longer. The new Family Health Center due to open in less than 30 days. To my knowledge no one is fighting that. Three Arches is eagerly awaiting their new office space in One Lakewood alongside a couple other businesses that have still not committed to the multi-use strip mall. I know of no one fighting that. Healthy Lakewood has found a board, and getting ready to start handing out the hundreds or thousands of dollars netted from the liquidation of the community owned $200 million dollars asset. Which our return is literally pennies on the dollars. And to my knowledge no one is fighting that.

However City Hall is still fighting the right of Lakewood residents to understand what happened and look at documents that every court has ruled are public.

What is City Hall hiding, and just how bad is it?

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Mr. O'Bryan continues to make very strong points here.

The city administration made an intentional decision to violate the Ohio public records access laws.

It took court orders to address the violations and, now, years later, the city is still waging that same battle. There is no reason for the city to continue this charade.

Citizens and journalists should be entitled to review public documents that reveal the internal processes, including legal processes, that led to the liquidation and closure of Lakewood Hospital: especially considering 1.) that it is likely that the city is improperly asserting claims of privilege for work of attorneys that are not ordinarily protected; and, 2.) that there is enough evidence in documents already released to indicate potential misdemeanors of Ohio law.

Given this, I believe that the court itself can take an expansive view of what needs to be produced by the city to effectively give meaning to the spirit of the law, not just its letter.

Unless you're a custodian of the nuclear codes it's gotta be out in the open. Stan Austin

Stan Austin wrote:Unless you're a custodian of the nuclear codes it's gotta be out in the open. Stan Austin

Stan

Actually there are a couple reasons the City can keep documents back. However most of those reasons have disappeared with the court cases over, the land and money disbursement and time.

Again and again we have seen courts declare them public documents, again and again the city refuses to turn them over.

We are quickly approaching a time when everyone should start to wonder, how bad are they, and what is being hidden from us.

Maybe we should call the missing documents "Charlie" or "Scruffy."

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With all due respect, history has shown that as time lapses the rape of public assets by politicians for their own endowment will become more palatable to the public. If you want the records, simply vote out the Democratic party. In reality this will never happen because the one ticket punch, push or lever pull is a tradition with Democrats. After all, you don't have to try to think through all the various candidates' barking dog, form over function, bigger government, mediocrity, same old thing, taxes too high, beautification, duplicate social services, etc. etc. etc. platforms.

When I was a newbie in city government I was advised by a very wise man, law is not logic and by a wiser man, that in any city 80 percent of the people simply don't care, 10 percent of the people will use and/or try to manipulate the government and the remaining 10 percent are crazy.

The history of the closing and demolition of Lakewood Hospital is a case study in what happens when you privatize public assets. Those assets slowly go up in smoke (or into the pockets of others).

The history of the closing and demolition of Lakewood Hospital is also a case study in what happens when you have single party government--naked conflicts of interest, pay-to-play cronyism, dishonesty, abandonment of ethics, violation of laws, and abuses of the court system.

As a community and as a city, we need to actively move to reform these problems. Public interest lawyers will not be able to do it for us. We have to engage this ourselves.

Richard Baker wrote:With all due respect, history has shown that as time lapses the rape of public assets by politicians for their own endowment will become more palatable to the public. If you want the records, simply vote out the Democratic party. In reality this will never happen because the one ticket punch, push or lever pull is a tradition with Democrats. After all, you don't have to try to think through all the various candidates' barking dog, form over function, bigger government, mediocrity, same old thing, taxes too high, beautification, duplicate social services, etc. etc. etc. platforms.

When I was a newbie in city government I was advised by a very wise man, law is not logic and by a wiser man, that in any city 80 percent of the people simply don't care, 10 percent of the people will use and/or try to manipulate the government and the remaining 10 percent are crazy.

Richard

Exactly what you are speaking of has been discussed here many, many times, but it is just not that easy to do or understand.

Example, Mayor Summers is errrrr was a lifelong Republican, and in his heart still is. What he surrounds himself with outside of council meetings are lifelong Republicans and/or Democrats that are willing to sell their souls for just a small peek at the next step on the ladder. Add in the complete take over of the Lakewood Democratic Club, or at least real Democrats being run off you have the perfect storm for mediocre in government and a world of secret agendas.

I have taken much grief here and in discussions looking back on the days when at least one real Republican sat on Council. They actually discussed and argue large deals for the City. It was not the rubber stamping which is so often seen now, though there have been some small ripples, nothing to see changes in Lakewood democracy coming. IT was heated debates in Council, that slowly became heated debates in COW meetings, and today, even those are lack lustre meetings which would seem to indicate discussions are happening out of the sight of residents and the Sun.

AS for your 80% number, I believe another breakdown is needed 51% of Lakewoodites are renters. Not all transients, but certainly many with less skin in the game than property owners, though Peter Grossetti used to argue that point. Then in the middle of the night, he moved out, no pesky property sale. Just packed up and left, which to a large extent proves my point. Then we have a number I would put much higher than 80% of people that elect representatives to not have to baby sit them, and not have to think about them until the next election. It is this complete lack of entanglement and critical thought that allows Tom Bullock to run on honesty, transparency, and accountability when it is doubtful he even knows the definition of any of them. Allows John Litten to be on the LHA Board, say closing the hospital is his greatest accomplishment and forget to mention it at election time to anyone. We truly deserve what we vote in.

Now on top of that let's throw in a study from a decade ago that claimed 65% of the public is medicated and 75% is self medicated. On top of that University of Michigan had found that the single largest pollutant in urban earthworms was prozac, and one starts to see the scope of the problem of even asking elected officials to be honest, accountable, and transparent.

Would a Republican help, history would say with one, yes, with more no. Look at Washington, we have nearly the same perfect storm as Watergate, Listen to Slow Burn from Slate, a nice recapture of the entire two years. You had Republicans protecting Nixon for a variety of reasons mostly dealing with self preservation, and power trades. You had a group of Democrats, which is a misnomer right there as Democrats are really many different agendas that come together every election to vote against Republicans. Which does not allow for singular group think. Add to that comments like, "They all lie," "They all do that," and the always present "I just don;t believe he/she would do that." And it becomes a messy situation aka backroom of the sausage factory.

Would bi-partisan elections change anything? Who knows? Would a City Manager change anything? Who knows? Would honest, accountable, transparent politicians that held City Hall to Transparency and Accountability change anything? Well at least that would allow the residents, the 10% or on a great day 20% that care double check, over see, and run the numbers do their things without any appreciable cost to the city. Yes, that would be a massive step in the right direction.

Fighting residents' right to know, the right to see the documents, and the right to understand and talk about their history can never been seen as a good thing.

Richard Baker wrote:With all due respect, history has shown that as time lapses the rape of public assets by politicians for their own endowment will become more palatable to the public. If you want the records, simply vote out the Democratic party. In reality this will never happen because the one ticket punch, push or lever pull is a tradition with Democrats. After all, you don't have to try to think through all the various candidates' barking dog, form over function, bigger government, mediocrity, same old thing, taxes too high, beautification, duplicate social services, etc. etc. etc. platforms.

When I was a newbie in city government I was advised by a very wise man, law is not logic and by a wiser man, that in any city 80 percent of the people simply don't care, 10 percent of the people will use and/or try to manipulate the government and the remaining 10 percent are crazy.

I thought Richard Baker's comments were mostly well taken, except for voting out Democrats. The big problem is in the Republicans who are masquerading as Democrats who I think should be tossed out at the first opportunity. But I also agree that the lack of political diversity has contributed to, or even caused, our present situation. I would welcome some ethically minded Republicans on Council.

I don't know about the 80% number, but it's close enough. I used to be among them. All I cared about locally was schools and services. I missed the whole West End debate because of that.

The problem is in the stubborn idea that a politician- Republican or Democrat- has the public's interest in mind. Government has become a vehicle for furthering a political career and/or getting their hands into the taxpayer honeypot. The anarchist argument that short a very engaged and mobilized citizenry you will always end up with an oligarchy is hard to argue with. Those who seek power will gravitate towards sources of power.

Jared Denman wrote:The problem is in the stubborn idea that a politician- Republican or Democrat- has the public's interest in mind. Government has become a vehicle for furthering a political career and/or getting their hands into the taxpayer honeypot. The anarchist argument that short a very engaged and mobilized citizenry you will always end up with an oligarchy is hard to argue with. Those who seek power will gravitate towards sources of power.

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Which brings up the Lord Action quote...

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And the real question that springs from that quote...

"Or does it just attract corruptible dishonest people?"

Which brings us back as it so often does to the secret government that runs or tries to run Lakewood...

In the old days, you know about ten years ago, there was a thought that politics did not matter on a local level. That in a City, especially one like Lakewood, elected officials paid the bills, provided services, and came up with something catchy to fill in the holes, or to do with the extra. That cost savings killing big government could not have a huge impact on Lakewood, and that because of the budget and lack of raises in taxes left to the people of Lakewood, making government bigger was not really possible. However that all changed in 2003 with the "West End Project," and the power structure it left behind.

What rose out of that was a desperate want and need to develop something anything to keep the taxes lower and keep the power structure north of the "William Sonoma Line." Those north of the center line on Lake Road wanted and demanded new schools, new libraries, and better services, but had no interest in paying for them themselves. Those misinformed illogical thinkers thought, "Get rid of 1,500 'poor' people that lived at the end of Detroit, and replace it with shining mix-use strip malls." While easy to think out that way, when the actual math was done, nothing could be farther from the truth. Right out of the box, a loss of 1,500 residents would have been catastrophic to other forms of finance the City of Lakewood is dependent on. Also you were replacing 1,500 middle class people with a handful of sales clerk and service jobs. But the desire of the upper middle class in Lakewood, had dreams and desires for low taxes, change and cheese cake factories!! And of course less lower middle class residents. Ohhhhh to dream.

When the West End failed because a mix of those wanting it lying about the facts, and a Mayor that lied followed by a Councilman that told the truth and won the election, a plan was put in place. Secure elected spots (legal), at City Hall and Schools. Create a farm system to bring along individuals to fill inevitable openings, and while being able to drill down and make sure 1) they were team players that could be counted on. 2) Were like minded people that would not stray and actually get week and care more about the poor and or desires of the community. 3) Could be counted on at all times to support "the team" even if it meant accepting lies, secret agendas they are not privy too, and the occasional outrage in their personal lives. Speak up, and you are kicked to the curb. Speak up and your child will not be allowed to play soccer. Make a mistake, get caught, no longer on the baseball team.

So it does not really fall to Republican or Democrat, but makes you look to their lineage and history.

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And, whoops, there goes your hospital !

Great job, city hall !

Mark Kindt wrote:And, whoops, there goes your hospital !

Great job, city hall !

Mark

This brings us back to where we met, and all the things you doubted when you heard them. A person that had lived here, but never thought just how screwed it all was, and that a small group of people could not just hurt a city, but destroy its heart, and walk off with the cash and prizes.

All while telling residents "we are doing it for you."

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