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Jul
29
I assume the Democratic endorsement for the seat that includes representation for Pepper Pike will come out tomorrow. Here’s today’s:
ENDORSEMENT
District 6 consists of Bentleyville, Brecksville, Broadview Heights, Brooklyn Heights, Chagrin Falls, Chagrin Falls Township, Cuyahoga Heights, Gates Mills, Glenwillow, Highland Heights, Hunting Valley, Independence, Mayfield, Mayfield Heights, Moreland Hills, Newburgh Heights, Oakwood, Pepper Pike, Solon, Valley View and Walton Hills. The winner of this race will be the Republican nominee for a two-year term. Early voting for the Sept. 7 primary begins Aug. 3.
THE CANDIDATES:
Sam P. Cannata, 47, attorney, business owner.
Jim Crooks, 31, public relations consultant, Independence council member.
Ed Hargate, 52, attorney, Highland Heights council member.
Jack Schron, 62, business owner, former Chagrin Falls school board member.
Don Sopka, 65, retired teacher, former Broadview Heights council member.
OUR VIEW:
The Republicans have a strong group of candidates — Crooks, for one, is a fount of energy and ideas — but none is more impressive than Schron. He has successfully helped steer Jergens Inc., the machine parts business that his grandfather and father started in a Collinwood garage, into the world of advanced manufacturing and global competition that they scarcely could have imagined.
He started an online education company to train new factory workers and has worked with Cleveland’s Max S. Hayes High School to do the same. He mentors other small firms through Cleveland-based MAGNET, the Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network, and WIRE-Net, on whose boards he serves. He worked with local, state and federal officials to clean up the old Collinwood rail yard, then built a new home there for Jergens. If the new county government is to be serious about economic development, Schron’s hands-on experience could be invaluable.
I have never disagreed more than I do now with the entire focus many who wanted reform are placing on an alleged need – and the alleged benefits – of having people with business experience enter public service. Public finance, in existent to meet resident needs, defies analogy.
One example: profit in the private sector is not equatable to healthy balances in the municipal budget sense. Profit, with public dollars, raises the suspicion of corruption, if you ask me. There is and there should be no such thing as profit in public finance. It either plows back into services or back to the taxpayers.
Another example: employee compensation and benefits. The state dictates numerous obligations to the cities that do not disappear when revenue streams evaporate due to economic conditions or the elimination of the estate tax (or any other source of municipal income).
Another example: decision-making. People coming from a business background need to understand that in public office, elected officials have to make the decisions, but voters/constituents/residents are not the same as shareholders. Selling your shares is not the same as selling your house. Also, in the age of access and the ability to meet demands for transparency and accountability so easily, there’s no “on a need to know basis” for supplying information. Public means public, just as much as private (as in private business sector) means private.
Anyway – I’ve never agreed with the emphasis on wanting and needing and feeling beholden to having business people come into elected office. There are fundamental disconnects between the two worlds. Can they benefit from one another? Sure, but to seek to have a public entity run like a business? I think the start of the county reform effort’s transition last year when the ACLU had to get involved in order to open up meetings that should have been open from the beginning is one of the best examples of the problems we’ll continue to see if we only seek to have business people run the county. Not to mention what having 12 elected business people will do to keeping track of conflicts of interest in awarding contracts, big and small.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:12 am July 29th, 2010 in Cleveland+, CuyahogaCounty, Elections, Endorsements, Government, leadership, Ohio, Pepper Pike, Transparency, Voting
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3 Responses to “Attn Pepper Pike Residents: PD Endorses Jack Schron for GOP Primary for New County District 6 Seat”
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Jill:
Businesses, non-profits and governments should all be led and managed in a similar fashion: Define strategy (objectives, methods, parameters), gather and organize resources (human, physical, financial), execute the plan, evaluate results, make adjustments, repeat. While it is true that one of the objectives of a business is to generate profits for its owners, that doesn’t happen if the other elements aren’t present as well.
Your post seems to paint all business people with the same brush. Are there corrupt business folks? Of course, just like the are corrupt elected officials and leaders of non-profits.
And why do you insinuate that if lots of business people were elected to public office, they would try to sneak off and have private meetings unless someone like the ACLU put up opposition. Fighting against inappropriate use of executive sessions by our school board was a battle I engaged in for a couple of years (and won). At the time, only one of the five school board members were business folks. It was the business people in the community who were calling out for transparency.
I’ve been a business executive, and have served on corporate boards. I’ve also been on several non-profit boards (e.g. http://www.nbpc.tv), am an elected official (school board), and am currently a “full time volunteer” for our church, teaching leadership and management to our young staff. A ‘business frame of mind’ is useful across all of these domains. My experience is that it is when an organization loses sight of basic business principles (delight your customers, anticipate the future, don’t run out of cash) that it gets in trouble.
You need money coming in at least as fast as it’s going out, or you run out of cash, and then you’re dead. If you can’t get more cash, you have have to spend less. Many many governments are being taught this lesson right now.
To be sure, a governing body is strongest when its members have a variety of experiences and perspectives. Just don’t presume that “business people” represent an evil force that needs to be balanced by the forces of liberal good.
Paul
Paul, I appreciate your comments. My ire is directed at how it is that our county ended up even entertaining the idea of a new form of county government and that those who pushed it the most have specifically stated that it’s their hope that the new government would attract and be run by people from the business sector. Campaign donations related to the reform effort indicate the enormous amount of cash flowing from corporate Cleveland into the effort. This raises my eyebrows. The key reformers’ continued statements in which they lament that there are not as many business people running as they would have liked and that instead we have a sea of electeds and previously elected and I think even a few who have lost in other elections to me shows a great naivete regarding who gets drawn to public service and why, not to mention the nature of public service.
I understand your criticism of the broad brushstroke. I narrow that brush to the effort here in Cuyahoga County to reform county government as its unfolded. The emphasis on business people being such a huge force has, from the start, been a real question mark to me, and that is in part driven by how we got here in the first place: conflicts of interest related to business connections. I fail to see how having even MORE people from the private sector in government will lead to LESS conflicts of interest related to business connections.
It just seems very superficial to me.
I understand.
To your last point, I think those conflicts exist anyway. Cheney isn’t the first politician – on either side of the aisle – who worked to direct money to his chums and supporters. One could argue that this is what every politician in a large enough government does, unless you’re Ross Perot or Michael Bloomberg.
There is always danger when one person, or a few people, have the power to spend large amounts of other people’s money, whether those other people are shareholders or taxpayers. Some will use that power to reap personal rewards. Sometimes that reward is money (business folk), and sometimes it’s power (politicians).
PL