On the Verge

Cleveland's troubles grow

Two brief police strikes, a wildcat walkout by municipal mechanics, 23 vetoes of city council legislation, continual scrambles to meet employee payrolls --it's been a tough nine months for Cleveland and Dennis Kucinich, 31, the nation's youngest big-city mayor. Last week it got tougher yet.

Cleveland had to decide whether or not to retain the mayor with the face of a clever schoolboy and the bite of a barracuda. The recall election was forced by Kucinich's enemies, who issued their challenge after he had fired popular Police Chief Richard Hongisto. Battling for his job, Kucinich claimed he was being hounded by "the bosses" because he fought for "the people." He won--barely. With fewer than half of the voters going to the polls, the mayor's strongholds among the white working-class ethnics, carried the day by 236 votes, 60,250 to 60,014. After his victory speech, Kucinich emerged from the Bondcourt Hotel waving a banner emblazoned: I SURVIVED THE RECALL OF 1978.

The question is, will Cleveland? Kucinich has been boycotting meetings of the city council, which has feuded with him so bitterly that the council president once ordered the mayor's microphone disconnected. Although Cleveland is one of the largest centers of corporate headquarters,

Kucinich has alienated business by accusing bankers of precipitating the city's credit crisis and by opposing tax abatements to companies that have proposed major downtown developments. The recall fight also aggravated longstanding racial problems. Kucinich supporters inflamed black leaders by distributing pictures of black City Council President George Forbes in white neighborhoods and saying that he would be the next mayor if they didn't vote for Kucinich.

Says Cuyahoga County Democratic Chairman Timothy Hagen: "This city is on the verge of a nervous breakdown." The bad situation, which Kucinich inherited, is deteriorating. Some symptoms:

>The city is having trouble raising money. Last month the Cleveland Trust Co. refused to refinance some $7.8 million worth of notes. Another $15.5 million could come due in December. Standard & Poor's has suspended Cleveland's credit rating, and the state auditor declared the city's books so scrambled that they could not be audited.

>Public services have faltered. As the Plain Dealer puts it, Cleveland has two categories of garbage trucks: those that can make it to the dump and those that can't. And the city still has no police chief.

>Because of his stance against Big Business, Kucinich refuses to let the city sell the municipal power company--known as Muny Light--as planned by the previous administration. The struggling utility owes $17.5 million to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., a private firm, and is under court order to pay $14.9 million by the end of the year.

>A federal court has postponed a massive school desegregation order for this fall because the Cleveland system is so broke it has no money for buses. Last week the school board president of ten years resigned.

All bad enough, but Cleveland's biggest crisis may be one of leadership. "It is my challenge to convert my critics," said Kucinich after beating the recall. That's a large order, since leaders of the Republican Party, of his own Democratic Party and of the black community, as well as 24 out of 33 city councilmen, the Teamsters Union and the Cleveland A.F.L.C.I.O., called for Kucinich's removal. The mayor has hinted that he will make changes in his brash young staff and will also start acting more conciliatory. Preaches he: "Let us work to achieve a new era of good feeling, with malice toward none, with charity toward all..."

Meanwhile, as the joke goes, what's the difference between Cleveland and the Titanic? Cleveland has a better orchestra.

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