Cuyahoga County Executive Considers Gubernatorial Bid
BOARDMAN, Ohio – Cuyahoga County Executive Ed Fitzgerald said Wednesday he will decide “soon” whether he will throw his hat into the ring for the 2014 race for governor.
“I think I’ll do something official early next year one way or another,” Fitzgerald said in an interview before addressing a luncheon meeting of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s government affairs council.
“I’m ramping up my travel schedule from now until the end of the year and having a lot of conversations with people and got a fair amount of encouragement, which by the way I consider to be a compliment for Cuyahoga County,” he continued. “If we hadn’t cleaned up our act there, people wouldn’t be having these conversations with me, so it’s a nice validation that what we’ve done in our county has been working.”
Fitzgerald is frequently mentioned among potential Democratic challengers to Gov. John Kasich, a Republican elected in 2010, the same year he was voted Cuyahoga County executive. Others include Richard Cordray, director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former state Attorney General, and former Gov. Ted Strickland, who Kasich unseated in 2010.
During his speech at the luncheon, which was held at Mr. Anthony's Banquet Center in Boardman, Fitzgerald steered away from partisan politics and focused on Cuyahoga County’s transition to a charter form of government following a political corruption scandal in the county that he described as “one of the worst in the state.” Rather than continue to do things the way they had been done before, “you can take an event like that and you can make a 180-degree turn and that’s what Cuyahoga County did,” he said.
In the new county charter, economic development was established as the primary function of county government. Other mandates in the charter were to consolidate county functions, become more efficient, and help increase college attainment.
Cuyahoga examined and adopted best practices from others including Mahoning County and Summit County in Ohio as well as Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Wayne County in Michigan. The county now has 500 fewer employees than when he took office. “You’ve got to make reasoned and informed judgments,” he said.
Cuyahoga has used its savings to establish a $100 million economic development fund, which Fitzgerald said is the largest in the state. Modeled somewhat on the state’s Third Frontier program but not devoted specifically to technology-related enterprises, he said the fund provides loans to small and medium-sized businesses and is creating jobs at six times the rate Cuyahoga did previously. He said he also challenged the lending community to participate and banks have committed and additional $100 million.
On the education front, Fitzgerald said in two weeks the county will launch a universal college program which will provide a startup college fund for every child in the county. “It tells every single child we believe you can go to college,” he said. “We can help you take the first half-step.”
Matt Blair, chairman of the chamber’s government affairs council, said Fitzgerald is doing “a wonderful job in Cuyahoga County” and many of the controls put in place there “are things we should be looking at here in the Valley given our own history.”
Five years ago the chamber established two committees to consider proposals for charter government in Mahoning and Trumbull counties in 2008. The proposals “didn’t make it to the ballot” but the chamber was able to work with officials to achieve some of its goals, he said. He does not anticipate revisiting the charter proposal “at this time,” Blair said.
“I don’t know if a charter form of government works everywhere but what the Mahoning Valley has to realize is we have to do things differently,” said David Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party. “We have to move toward regionalization of a lot of government services because we can no long afford how we’re doing business now.”
Copyright 2012 The Busienss Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.