As Cleveland City Council members run for reelection, Blaine Griffin is making sure his colleagues get some credit for the work they’ve been doing at City Hall.
The council president held a news conference Tuesday to highlight council’s accomplishments over the last three-and-a-half years. On Griffin’s list were a new community benefits system for developers, salary transparency rules, paid family leave for city workers, neighborhood projects paid for with federal stimulus dollars and “pay to stay” legislation for tenants facing eviction, to name a few.
Flanked by several council colleagues, Griffin did not wade into the politics of any particular council race. Some members, like Griffin himself, are unopposed. Others will face challengers. At least two, Rebecca Maurer and Richard Starr, are running against each other after redistricting eliminated two council seats.
“Many of the colleagues that you see here today will be going to the community to talk about a lot of the work that we’ve done on council and stand on their record,” he said.
Although they can butt heads, council and Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration work together on the big-ticket items that come out of City Hall. Griffin said that council hadn’t been a rubber stamp for the mayor. And if the mayor often enjoys the limelight, the council president tried to bring council out from under Bibb’s shadow.
“Even though the mayor oftentimes gets a lot of the credit, the real debate and the real fights and the real sausage-making, as they call it in government, happens in this body,” Griffin said. “And I can tell you that iron sharpens iron.”
Withstanding the hits
Griffin likened Cleveland to a football player taking hits during practice drills. The city can either buckle or stand up and fight back. Those hits are coming from the federal and state governments, he said.
“We have a state that oftentimes attacks us relentlessly,” he said, “a state that will give money to billionaires and others — but if you’re a woman, if you’re a person of color, if you’re LGBTQIA, if you belong to a union or you believe in public education, you have nothing coming from them.”
The council president also pointed out activists who, in his telling, take their frustrations to City Council without understanding the “nuances” or “big picture” of government. He didn’t specify which activist group or political issue he had in mind.
With Maurer at his side, Griffin said redistricting was the hardest challenge he has dealt with. The two of them had exchanged heated words on the council floor during the map-drawing debate.
“At the end of the day, I’ve appreciated working with all 16 of my colleagues,” he said. “There’s not one colleague that I can tell you that I have vitriol about, that I have any kind of desire to see harmed.”
At the wide-ranging news conference, the council president took questions about paying for sports stadiums, holding out-of-town landlords accountable and more. Here are a few highlights.
Money for a new Browns stadium a low for state government, Griffin says
Griffin said the state budget’s $600 million set-aside for a new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park was “probably one of the lowest forms of government” that he had seen. Like other local elected leaders, the council president wanted the Browns to renovate the city-owned lakefront stadium that the team has used since 1999.
The state budget also opened the way for Cuyahoga County voters to double the sin tax on alcohol and cigarettes to pay for a football stadium, Rocket Arena and Progressive Field. The budget also allows voters to levy a sin tax on vapes.
But Griffin suggested that voters would shoot the new sin tax down. Echoing Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, he said the state didn’t give locals enough flexibility for dividing up sin tax proceeds. Under the new state law, the money must be split evenly among major league facilities.
Without naming the Haslams, who own the Browns, Griffin complimented the owners of the Cavaliers and Guardians.
“Dan Gilbert has shown that he’s putting his money where his mouth is at,” Griffin said. “The Dolans, who have Progressive Field, have shown that they have a commitment to Cleveland. So we should be able to decide how and where we make those investments.”
Plus, the state didn’t allow voters to hike the sin tax as high as Griffin wanted, limiting how much money it would raise. The current tax is stretched thin, which is why Gateway Economic Development Corp. tapped the city and county last year for $40 million to pay for ballpark and arena repairs.
Taking on ‘I buy houses’ investors
Griffin made headlines this week by calling out a real estate investor whose billboards offered to buy “crack houses” and “trash” houses. At least one billboard ad has come down, Cleveland.com reported, while the investor, John Williams, told news media that he is trying to fix up vacant houses in disrepair.
Cleveland’s tug-of-war with property investors goes beyond a single buyer. Under its new Residents First law, the city now requires landlords to maintain a local agent whom the city can hold responsible for code violations.
As Signal Cleveland reported recently, more than 2,400 local agents have signed up to represent more than 10,300 properties. But there may be as many as 54,000 rental properties in the city, according to a Case Western Reserve University estimate.
Asked whether Residents First was working, Griffin said the “proof is in the pudding.” As with Cleveland’s lead paint law, there had been “hiccups” in enforcing the rules, he said. Griffin said he plans to review the city’s progress with the building and housing director at the end of the year.
“We’re going to examine a lot of these things with a fine-toothed comb to see if we’re doing what we need to do legislatively,” he said.
Council’s stature at Cleveland City Hall
Griffin took a pass on challenging Bibb in this year’s mayor’s race. Instead, it appears he’s focusing on giving City Council an identity of its own. He quoted and praised his colleagues throughout the news conference.
While some prior council presidents were criticized as being rubber stamps — unfairly, Griffin added — the current council has been independent, he said. Just look at public comment sessions.
When people “want to come speak truth to power,” Griffin said, “they oftentimes come to council.”
