It’s interesting how Allegheny county PA never was mentioned related to issue 6, makes me wonder if it was never brought to anyones attention that the county that Pittsburg sits in went through the relative same change in 2000.

Here is a Wiki link, notice that Allegheny has only four cities within it, but has 130 individual municipalities and they are represented Cites, Burroughs and also Townships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_County,_Pennsylvania

It implemented the same type of county reform in 2000 after implementation of a home rule charter.

Study show that consolidation of municipalities within these types of charter county government would better serve them.

Cuyahoga does not have that many municipalities with only 60 individual Cities, Townships and Villages

We do have two operating townships, but the nineteen original townships are all defunct or on paper only townships.

That’s because home rule in Ohio allowed referendums early on allowed the incorporation of sections into separate municipalities. Allowing 21 townships to become 60 separate municipalities.

There is also a 300+ page government circulating an efficiency report for the city of Cleveland, that report calls for (in part) combining city functions with like county functions.

I feel very strongly that the county should offer centralized information technology, it should offer a standard software application and central data storage. It could offer that to every municipality and track statistics and metric for them. It could also sort by and categorize that data by townships. Doing that could and may reveal that consolidations back to township may better serve the citizens within them.

Running though a standard methods allows for comparative analysis, per capita costs and tax revenue.
Since the county is the primary front end for intergovernmental funds and dispersions it all could be tracked and recorded by districts to and for all of us to see where the money goes.

Things like departmental funding could be displayed like an accordion, tiered and then split down into line items. By project and by who was awarded the contracts, then even summaries by contractors who get the lion share of government spending in NEO?

Cost of road crew compared by districts, cost per mile for resurfacing or replacing roads.

Morals are great thats if you can see them, its more about actual business skills, Wasserman never presented the Ports Board with a business plan. He last asked for what $50 million, he also just returned from Washington and must not have felt he had support. Not that such a ambitious plan as his required a formal business plan? it was all very tentative and highly subjective to changes in the economy and also required a support from several entities, I’m sure that they would have liked a more formal business report as well.

We will not see the first inland US container port in the US, thats likely to go to Oswego and not likely to see a cruise ship terminal like that going in at Toledo….we are not an easy region to work within, Wasserman would undoubtedly express that if they did not write him a severance check.

Last week, the P.D. deigned to publish a letter I wrote in response to a front page story by Laura Johnston that stated: “In the first few months under the charter, council members are expected to tackle a code of ethics and campaign finance reform.”

That will be too late, as the money powers in the County will already have selected and purchased the county executive, and at least strongly influenced the campaigns of the ll council members.

Until we get private money OUT of our political campaigns, any pretense of democracy is only that: a gloss obscuring the power brokers behind the curtain and an occasional bone tossed to a restive electorate.

We can start at the local level with voluntary public funding of campaigns, and I propose that this is an ideal time to start.

BTW, here’s a suggestion for rewriting the title of your post: “What can we do to implement county reform via Issue 6?”

It’s pretty amazing (and depressing) that the League of Women Voters apparently totally missed the issue of campaign finance reform in their eagerness to endorse Issue 6, which is silent on the subject.

Doesn’t that make me more…normal and authentic!?

And I re-read this fictional, but all the more true for it, bit in Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah last evening.

“Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.”

B’shalom,

Jeff

Please tell me you used the word impact under extreme duress and serious distraction by your family.

B’shalom,

Jeff