After nearly six months of what can only be called screwing around, the General Assembly has finally scheduled a hearing on Senate Bill 353, the “county land bank” proposal initiated by Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis to create a mechanism for acquiring, holding and using foreclosed and abandoned houses.
The Senate State and Local Government Committee [...]
Sheriff’s sales of foreclosed properties in Cuyahoga County are down significantly from their peak in 2007, but still average more than five hundred a month, according to data from NEO CANDO.
The monthly average for May through October 2008 was about 550 sales, compared to 770 during the same six months in 2007. This lower level [...]
This probably isn’t going to get reprinted where it should be — on the PD op-ed page — so…
This morning’s Pittsburgh Tribune Review has a savage commentary on the Plain Dealer’s recent front-page infatuation with their home town: “Potemkin Pittsburgh, perpetuated” .
Here’s the whole thing:
Nobody held any demonstrations on Public Square when Charter One Bank — which the Koch family had grown from a Cleveland S&L to a regional power bank in less than twenty years — was bought out in 2004 by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But now: Goodwin’s $140 Billion Binge May Doom RBS to Nationalization.
Ed Hauser, the laid-off LTV engineer who became Northeast Ohio’s most important champion of open government — mostly by showing up at meetings of obscure public bodies with his video camera and relentlessly researched citizen testimony — is dead of a heart attack at 47.
This is a huge loss to the people of Northeast Ohio.
If [...]
The PD’s Theresa Dixon Murray has done some great analytical reporting on the PNC/National City deal in the past week, starting with this piece posted Monday evening (and printed Tuesday morning), and summed up in her article today.
The source of most of Murray’s new details is a long SEC filing about the buyout which PNC [...]
It’s almost 2009. Think somebody’s getting that mayoral itch again?
Of course there’s no arguing with much of the logic of Dan Moore’s op-ed today. The Bush Treasury obviously did rig the bailout system to create a designated winner, PNC, and target a designated loser, National City. This was a scandalous abuse of the public trust, [...]
In its letter delivered to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judges last Wednesday, the Foreclosure Action Coalition asked for a response by yesterday, November 6, to our proposal for a blanket 90-day stay of foreclosure cases involving occupied homes. We provided a telephone number as well as email and snailmail addresses.
As of today, not a single [...]
On the day before Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, 139 more foreclosed properties were sold at auction by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office.
55 of this week’s Sheriff’s sales were in the city of Cleveland. 84 were in the suburbs.
Average weekly Sheriff’s sales, last four weeks (excluding tax sales): 134. Average for [...]
According to State Rep. Mike Foley, there will be at least 50 Democrats in the Ohio House of Representatives in January.
It looks like Armond Budish of Beachwood (whose 8th District includes Cleveland Wards 3 and 4) is in line for Speaker.
P.S. Soon-to-be-Speaker Budish represents Cleveland Ward 3, Cleveland Ward 4, Shaker Heights, Beachwood, Warrensville Heights, [...]