Cleveland City Council members have received more than $18 million in casino money to spend from 2012 through April of this year.
Earlier this year, Signal Cleveland reported on how council members directed millions of casino fund dollars over a two-year period for food programs, lawn care for seniors and supporting local businesses. The reporting also revealed that small organizations, businesses and neighborhood groups were often left waiting for months – or more than a year – for the promised money.
New data, accessed through public records requests, provides a deeper look into a decade of City Council’s casino revenue spending. More than 10 years of financial records show every project that each ward has funded, how much has been spent, and what’s left unspent.
The records also reveal more about how often projects that are promised funds don’t end up receiving any.
Explore the interactive charts and maps below.
The process of spending casino money is complicated
The process of spending casino funds involves many steps, complicated contracts, and rules about how money can be spent. While council can decide how the money is spent, it has to work with city departments to execute and monitor the project. All spending has to be approved by the law department.
Projects carried out by people outside City Hall have to be approved through legislation; those inside City Hall don’t.
Signal Cleveland sent its findings to City Council staff to provide an opportunity to share context or comments. Staff members disagreed with our finding about how much of the casino fund pot remains unspent, but they declined to share specifics or to meet.
Why looking at how casino money is spent matters
Council members have wide discretion to spend casino funds, and some members have argued that they should get a bigger share so they can support even more needs in the neighborhoods they serve.
There is little public accounting for how the money is spent overall or in individual city wards.
For instance, Signal Cleveland’s initial reporting showed that some of the promised casino money didn’t make it to the recipients. People using the money outside of City Hall have to spend it up-front and submit their expenses for reimbursement. This makes casino funds a risky bet for some people and for smaller, cash-strapped organizations.
What we found
We walk through what we found below. Charts, maps and searchable graphics help you explore the data. You can also view the findings and charts in a mobile friendly slideshow or one formatted for desktop.
Over a decade, Signal Cleveland’s analysis found, nearly 30% of the available money has not yet been spent.
From 2012 through 2022, more than $17 million went into a fund for council members to spend. As of April 2023, more than $12.2 million had been spent and an additional $1.2 million was dedicated to specific projects but had not been paid out. This leaves $3.7 million sitting unmarked for any specific projects.
Council staff disagreed with these amounts, but no one would meet with Signal Cleveland to discuss the figures in greater detail. Projects started in 2023 were excluded from the totals because they would artificially inflate the amounts not paid out yet. Most projects started in 2023 show budgeted amounts that are mostly not spent as of April of the same year.
Signal Cleveland asked for more information about why $3.7 million remains undedicated to specific projects.
Council Chief of Communications Joan Mazzolini told us that “projects could still be in the planning stages and money is not allocated until invoices or applications have been received and approved.”
Hover over or touch the chart below to see detailed dollar amounts. The cumulative total allocated by the end of 2022 is a little over $17 million, shown by the gray line. Of these funds, $12.2 million have been spent (green bar), and $1.2 million have been set aside for projects but not yet spent (yellow bar). The orange bar represents the unused funds ($3.7 million).
Casino money allocated, spent and unused
One in five projects promised funding as of the end of 2022 had not received any as of the end of April 2023
Most projects receive all of the promised funds. Of the projects that receive any funding, on average they receive 97% of what was promised.
But one out of every five projects has not yet received any funds. Those are reflected with a $0 budget or $0 spent in the records. All projects with $0 budgets also show $0 spent.
Officials say projects listed with a $0 budget have been “closed” by the funding council member. Council also said that sometimes a project may not meet the eligibility requirements for reimbursement.
Casino funds are paid through reimbursements. That means that the money has to be spent by the person or organization carrying out the project, then they submit paperwork to the city to get paid. The process can be onerous – some neighborhood groups told Signal Cleveland it can take a year or longer to get a reimbursement check for money they spent on projects.
The chart below shows the number of projects funded each year. The projects are split into three groups:
- Paid-out projects: received any amount of funds more than $0 (on average, projects that receive any funds receive 97% of their budgeted funds).
- Canceled projects: have a $0 budget in the records and show $0 spent.
- Not-yet paid projects: have a non-zero budget but $0 has been spent as of April 2023.
Number of projects by funding received
Council spent half of its casino money – more than $6 million – on 10 types of projects.
Through casino funds, council supports large and small projects. Half of the funds went to 323 projects and items.
The other half of the funds went to just 10 types of projects. Council members spent millions on street repairs, food assistance, housing code enforcement, video surveillance cameras, lawn care for seniors, loans for home repairs, a program to clean up vacant lots, an East Side development project and city internships.
The largest percentage of Cleveland City Council’s casino revenue funds spent on a single project from 2014 through April 2023 was on what’s described in records as council’s internship program. City records show that more than $1 million was approved by council in 2014.
The records show the project was funded only in 2014, but Mazzolini said in an email that that council members have “continually added” to that fund through 2023 and it is used by council members who hire “part-time interns.”
We spoke to the finance department and officials confirmed that money has been spent on internships from 2014 through 2023. They could not tell us more about what positions were funded.
Explore the 323 casino fund-supported projects below.
In public record, each casino-funded project receives a separate line of funding for each year it’s supported. To look at projects across the past 10 years, we combined projects that appeared to be related. We start with 598 projects and combine those to end with 333 projects. You can see more about how we combined projects here. The internship project described above, “Cleveland City Council Internship Program,” was not combined with any other internship project records.
Explore casino fund projects
There are big differences in amounts of casino funds spent across Cleveland’s 17 wards
In 2022, each ward got roughly $116,000 of casino funds. According to council staff, council members of lower-income wards trade casino funds for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding. These funds come from the federal government and have restrictions on where and how they can be used.
Council staff stated that higher-income wards may not be able to use CDBG funds, so they swap them for casino funds from lower-income wards. These transfers result in differences in the total amount allocated per ward.
Shown in the map below, Ward 17 (West Side) has nearly twice the total allocation of Ward 3 (Downtown).
Council members choose how to spend casino funds, though there are some rules. Many council members use the money to support neighborhood-level improvements or residents who need food or help with home repairs. Council members can also send the money to city departments for projects such as paving roads.
The new data also helps show more about council members’ spending priorities. For example, two West Side wards – 17 and 13 – spent nearly one-third and nearly half, respectively, on road resurfacing.
In Ward 4, big portions, 59%, are spent on buying gift cards for groceries and cleaning and cutting vacant lots and maintaining vacant structures, parks and cemeteries.
Curious about how casino funds are spent in your ward? Touch or click a ward to see what’s been allocated and spent over time. You can also see each project supported by that ward.
Total amounts allocated, budgeted and spent by Cleveland ward
Search casino fund projects
What to know about the casino money data
While the new data illuminates more about casino fund spending, it has limitations. Some things to know:
- It only presents a snapshot of spending as-of April 2023. We can see what projects were funded, the year they were first funded, and the total amount spent on a project up to April 2023. The records don’t tell us exactly when the money was spent. For example, the contract for a project may be signed in February of 2020 while the first reimbursement check is sent in April 2021 and the last check sent in August 2022. In our charts, spending on that project would be listed in 2020.
- All money listed as expended, encumbered and pre-encumbered is “spent.” Money that is encumbered or pre-encumbered hasn’t been sent out as a check yet but is in the process of being cut and sent.
- Projects without a year code in the raw data are included in 2014, the first year any records of project spending are available. There are 14 projects without a year code, totaling $438,738 in casino funds budgeted and spent.
- To look at casino fund supported projects over time, we created a version of project names that are cleaned-up. We start with 1,084 records in the data that represent projects and each ward that funds a project. We then group projects across wards that support them for a total of 598 unique projects. Finally, we clean up project descriptions to look at projects funded across time, reducing the number of unique projects to 333.
- The data include both casino fund supported projects and casino fund transfers. Most of the transfers are from one ward to another. A few of the transfers are to the Mayor and other city departments. The transfers to other city departments total $206,991. It is not clear whether these transfers to city departments are also included in the project records. If not included in project records, the amount of unspent funds could lower from $3.7 million to $3.5 million.
Want to dive deeper into the data?
Access a searchable database of the projects, as well as our original public records request, our machine-readable files, and more information about how we worked with the data here.