Time for a change at Ninth and Prospect

When County reform was sold to voters back in 2009, it was touted as a way to end corruption, establish strong executive leadership that would act decisively and be held accountable, and as a platform to drive economic growth.

Results to date have not been encouraging.

Cuyahoga County is stagnant. We’ve had two county executives so far; neither has proven up to the task.

Effective electoral leadership is both an art and a skill. We give Ed FitzGerald a bit of a pass because he was the first [2010-14] to hold the newly created office of County Executive. Establishing new processes in a billion dollar operation, especially in a feudal county government like ours, was not easy. By our estimation FitzGerald did admirable work in many ways.

Problem was, he was kind of a jerk. He might have kept that somewhat under wraps had he kept his head down and continued attending the mundane details of daily governance. But his unchecked ambition led him by the nose to seek higher office, where his jerkiness was quickly revealed on the front page of every newspaper in the state.

FitzGerald was succeeded in 2015 by the thoroughly lackluster Armond Budish, who now seeks re-election.

Cobwebs have appeared on anyone waiting for a Budish administration to display energy, initiative and imagination to any meaningful degree.

Budish seems to owe his political success primarily to two factors: being in the right place at the right time, and having the ability to raise copious campaign dollars. The first factor, abetted by the second, helped him become Speaker of the House in the state legislature after only a single term as representative. He was largely ineffective as Speaker, in part because of the determined obstructionism Republicans practice whenever they are in the minority. But tellingly, nowhere did he display the kind of energy, initiative, and imagination required to rise above, go around, or break through the obstacles that are always in the leader’s path.

Budish was again in the right place when FitzGerald abandoned his post to run for Governor in 2014. He raised so much cash that he vanquished would be primary challengers without really having to present his credentials to voters. Although businessman and then-county councilman Jack Schron ran a credible general campaign, Budish’s funding, combined with the genial image he had established through his years of Sunday morning television show talks offering legal advice to seniors, made him pretty much a shoe-in.

Problem is, being chief executive of this county takes even more energy, initiative, and imagination than is required to lead a legislature. Cobwebs have appeared on anyone waiting for a Budish administration to display those traits to any meaningful degree.

Peter Corrigan, Budish’s opponent in the Nov. 6 general election, is a 60-year old little-known international businessman who lives in Rocky River and got on the ballot as a write-in candidate in the GOP primary. Such is the public lethargy in this town: Corrigan is virtually a stealth candidate for an office that county “reform” leaders predicted would be the second most important powerful in the state.

I was asked a few weeks ago by friends of his campaign team to meet with Corrigan. We met for a Saturday breakfast at Tommy’s on Coventry in Cleveland Heights. I confess that my low expectations for the encounter were not dislodged when I sat down in a booth across from a large, rumpled and ruddy-faced fellow with a reindeer Rudolph’s nose.

Turns out, he explained with the good-natured affability that is undoubtedly one of his many strengths, he had committed a novice candidate’s campaign trail blunder: he turned to address a stranger calling his name and awkwardly fell off a step, bloodying himself in the tumble.

Corrigan’s deep emotional intelligence, the kind essential for success in any primary leadership role, began to shine through quickly as he talked about his family (35-year marriage, three successful adult children), his education (Ignatius, a physics degree from Wake Forest, an MBA in finance from Case Weatherhead School of Management), and his high level business career (includes two and a half years living in and running a manufacturing business with 900 employees in Buenos Aires).

When he began to deconstruct the problems with our county government and his pragmatic way of addressing them, born of his engineer’s common sense approach (diagnose, experiment, resolve), it became clear why he was the superior candidate in this race.

Cuyahoga County is an insider government. Budish is a club member of the highest order. He will never ruffle a single feather of any important interest.

Cuyahoga County is an insider government. Rearranging its electoral spokes did nothing to change its essential character and mechanisms.

Armond Budish may have come late to politics but the ease with which he has slipped into key governance roles testifies to his quintessential insider status.

It turns out that the two ostensible factors of Budish’s political success — timing and money — are rooted in this insider status. Budish is a club member of the highest order. He will never ruffle a single feather of any important interest, which means this county and thus this region will continue falling further behind as it slogs through the accumulated mud of outmoded approaches to contemporary issues.

“Soft corruption”, with its tolerance of incompetence, is a part of our local culture.

You needn’t be either rocket scientist or engineer to understand that our antiquated political ways would reveal their inadequacies in the county’s futile and evermore costly search for a new software system. Ten years ago we might have explained away this botching of a critical governance function by smugly pointing out that a sanitation worker with a high school degree was running the operation. But while that cartoon of an insider is now in prison, county authority now rests with another insider, albeit one with a distinguished educational and professional pedigree.

Corrigan referred in our breakfast conversation to the continuing “soft corruption” that remains a part of our local culture, irrespective of political party.

It goes much deeper than mere partisan politics. It explains why Budish would turn to insider attorney Fred Nance to negotiate the details of the publicly funded expansion of Quicken Loans Arena. Nance was a horrendous choice, his work an egregious conflict of interest. (It went unmentioned that the fee his firm was paid was, according to at least one lawyer in a position to know, substantially out of line with industry norms, where fees are based on the size of the deal.)

Our tolerance of “soft corruption” also explains silence from Budish when outrage is called for over what’s happening at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. It seems par for the course, an acceptable level of incompetence. Ditto for Budish’s mishandling of so many personnel issues, including that of his chief of staff and the overtime debacle.

Corrigan suggested that part of the county mess rests in its unwieldy disorganization. The county organizational chart, he said, has the county executive with 47 direct reports, 400% more than a smart business of similar size would have. There is no way that any executive can know what’s happening under his watch with this kind of structure.

A Corrigan administration would bring substantial necessary improvements to our county. Among his priorities: flattening the county organizational structure that has a ridiculous 13 organizational levels, each of which serves as a expensive filter that impedes accountability; addressing the crisis in children and family services, where a 25% turnover rate disserves children and costs money; and developing a long-term strategic plan for growth.

A non-ideological outsider, Corrigan’s very presence and practical approach would be a healthy disinfectant. His ability to delegate and hold direct reports accountable would improve county functionality immeasurably. And, notwithstanding his GOP affiliation, we believe that a Corrigan administration — hiring, evaluating and retaining talent based on competence as opposed to connection — offers a better and healthier way to genuine inclusion than the patronage model that currently reigns, notwithstanding the reformers’ 2009 rearrangement of the deck chairs.

Cuyahoga County should elect Peter Corrigan as its next county executive.

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