Pictured are Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (wearing eye glasses), Cleveland Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin (wearing purple patterned tie), and former Cleveland councilman Jeff Johnson (wearing maroon patterned tie), who tried unsuccessfully to unseat Jackson in 2017, among others
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief Investigative reporter. Coleman holds a bachelor's degree in biological science and has reported on science-related issues.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com-CLEVELAND, Ohio- Though Cleveland City Council last week passed what the Cleveland mainstream media has dubbed historic legislation on lead -safe housing and the Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing (CLASH) has suspended a second petition drive to get signatures for a lead-safe ballot initiative after Clerk of Council Pat Britt rejected 6,350 valid signatures that CLASH submitted earlier this year, tensions are still ripe between the greater Cleveland activist group and city council, and between CLASH and Mayor Jackson.
Cleveland's charter required 5,000 signatures to put the issue before voters, CLASH actually submitting some 10,000 petition signatures in April when Britt rejected them.
But the second time around CLASH fell short, members saying it was more difficult to collect signatures, a wake-up call that the mayor and city council have more clout and influence than activists, whether keeping the ballot initiative from reaching the ballot, or in defeating the initiative, if it reaches voters for approval.
There is no doubt, however, that CLASH is organized, and knows full well how to agitate the mayor and city council.
And while CLASH members said publicly, and diplomatically, that the group was suspending its second petition drive for signatures for a ballot initiative because the city has passed lead-safe legislation, a member speaking on condition of anonymity, told Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com that the group could not meet the Aug 1 deadline for petitions to be submitted in order to get the measure before voters in March 2020.
"We could not meet the deadline of August 1 for the signatures for a ballot initiative." said a CLASH member, the member making it obvious of dissension between CLASH and city leaders, the effort itself to petition voters to intervene at the ballot box an indication of conflict between the progressive activist group and City Hall.
Other CLASH members say they won by forcing Cleveland to do something about lead poisoning in Cleveland housing, and its impact on the city's predominately Black children.
Regardless, one could hardly disagree that it was also a battle of the wits, Jackson, a political wizard and four-term mayor, winning in the end.
A former Ward 6 councilwoman, Clerk of Council Britt , in April, rejected the petitions from CLASH for a ballot initiative in April, saying they were legally flawed because they lacked the caps disclaimer on the back of the petitions, language required under state law that is designed to warn those who circulate petitions that election petition falsification is a felony under state law. And for the same reason she refused to submit the proposed ordinance by CLASH to city council for review and possible adoption into law.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections certified the signatures as valid but said also in a letter to CLASH members that the petitions were flawed and violate state elections laws by excluding mandated election falsification language.
CLASH's legislation, as crafted before Britt rejected the petition signatures in April, would have required that landlords make rental properties lead-safe by 2020.
In a quandary over the controversy, city council, led by Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, formerly the mayor's director of the city's Community Relations Board, adopted its own lead-safe legislation last week, not one member of City Council backing CLASH'S proposed legislation.
The new legislation, adopted by city council 16-1 with Councilman Anthony Brancatelli saying he voted against it because it was rushed, requires landlords to pay for private inspections and make applicable rental units lead- safe by March 2021 or face possible housing code violations.
It also levels registration fees, requires disclosure to home buyers or renters on whether a property is lead safe, and creates a lead safe advisory board, a screening and testing commission, and a lead-safe auditor.
Among others, CLASH is led by Steve Holecko of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, Yvonka Hall of the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, and Larry Bresler, a trained lawyer who leads organize Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, all of them smart,
Former Ward 10 councilman Jeff Johnson, who is a Black attorney who lost a bid for mayor in 2017, is also a leader of CLASH, and often one of its spokespersons, Johnson and Hall saying that the historic Glenville neighborhood on Cleveland's largely Black east side, parts of which he represented until leaving city council to run for mayor in 2017, has one of the highest percentages of lead poisoning of children in Northeast Ohio, practically all of them Black.
A former Ohio senator, Johnson fought for lead-safe housing when he was on city council, the former councilman a nemesis to Mayor Frank Jackson, who, like Johnson, is Black, the city's third Black mayor in fact.
“We have finally taken a significant step to ending a public health crisis in Cleveland," Johnson said for a story published last week by Cleveland Scene Magazine.
All three, Jackson, Griffin and Johnson, are Democrats, and so is every single member of city council, and most of CLASH.
Johnson took on Jackson in 2017 but lost in the non-partisan primary behind former councilman Zack Reed, whom the mayor defeated in the general election, Jackson winning and Johnson and Reed, also a Black east side councilman, forced to forego reelection to city council in order to run for mayor.
The extent of lead poisoning in Cleveland is debatable, the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, lobbying for CLASH and saying in articles that Cleveland's lead-bound children are four times more likely to get lead poisoning in comparison to the national average.
Poor children who live in substandard housing and children under six are more vulnerable to lead poisoning, data show, which is largely found in dust, paint. contaminated water, and air.
Excessive levels of lead poisoning in children can effect both physical and mental development.
But in spite of all the problems it can cause, it is not routinely fatal.
City officials, and some Cleveland community activists like Donna Walker-Brown, say CLASH's proposed legislation lacked the safeguards to protect landlords where necessary and that the Black community and Black leaders were not included relative to the crafting of the legislation by the largely suburban group of activists.
"They will be entering properties to violate our privacy with their inspections, the fines for lead poisoning could be excessive, and we need Black activist groups and the Black community at the table," said Walker Brown in voicing opposition earlier this year, Walker-Brown a Cleveland landlord who is a member of Black on Black Crime Inc. and leads the Cleveland Inner City Republican Movement.
Walker-Brown said she feared that CLASH's ballot initiative, had the initiative made the ballot, would have ultimately benefited the establishment and would have hurt struggling landlords like herself if safeguards were lacking, and that it could be another way to steal homes via illegal foreclosures for not paying fines or correcting housing code violations around the issue, even if the fines and housing code violations are not warranted.
Cuyahoga County officials and common pleas judges, big banks and mortgage companies like JPMorgan Chase Bank, and the office of the county sheriff, among others, are already under scrutiny because of the gross theft of homes of residents of the county via illegal foreclosure activity.
Whether the new lead-safe legislation passed by city council last week protects landlords and homeowners from abuse via excessive fines, and unnecessary, arbitrary housing code violations, or any other erroneous activity, remains to be seen with CLASH saying it intends to push for amendments to the legislation.
Likewise, reducing lead poisoning in impoverished urban cities like Cleveland extends beyond holding landlords accountable, research shows.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
