At Falls City Hall, little things can tell you a lot

Risking the wrath of Mayor Robart's Republican friends, his  fellow Tea Partyers,  evangelicals and County GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff,  I must  again question the sincerity of  his response to a certain earlier matter in his midst now that his huge campaign ads  so loudly boast of his uncommon expertise in serving as a watchdog  of his town's piggy banks.   "Without raising taxes," of course.

When the issue of whether to grant a family rate at the Natatorium to a same-sex married couple arose  in the spring of 2012, the mayor wiggled around  other opinions to resist the lower rate as a costly concession that the city could ill-afford. He coupled that silly notion with references to the state's ban on same-sex marriages even though the couple was married in Washington, D.C.

So that's one unseemly instance of how he's managed the city's finances? And although the rate change held the 6-5 Democratic majority on City Council, it would still have lost by a threatened veto by the mayor.

Even the city law director said a discounted rate would not  be a problem under state law.   It was already working in other places.  But that's how Robart saw it and he prevailed.

Should we be surprised  when such pathetic (biased?)  ways of governing  again turn up if he should win again on Tuesday. It is, after all, 2013.  Even in his cloistered suburban island.

Putting this single event in the context of a mayor's  many duties doesn't seem to be that important, you may say.  But you can learn a lot about the priorities of a  chief executive from it.

 It was the same Robart, after all, who put his faith in Rick Santorum's religious-based presidential fantasies.  Second choice:  Newt Gingrich, the dead-ender who wanted to fire all of the school janitors. With Robart, it's always possible that political options can exceed one's grasp.

Arshinkoff to drop the nuclear TV ad bomb in Falls mayoral race

Is Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff ready to drop the nuclear Cleveland  TV ad bomb on Tuesday's  mayoral race in Cuyahoga Falls?  A Republican source  tells me he is a little surprised that the boss hasn't spent more to prop up Tea Party mayor Don Robart and has saved the cash for the final week end assault on Democrats in several races that will doubtless include radio bursts.

There must be some anxiety in the Robart camp over polls showing he is in a tight race with Democrat Don Walters, the president of Falls City Council.  You may recall that Robart, now in his 27th year in the mayor's office, ran unopposed four years ago.

Robart continued his mystical hold on  the local media this year with odd endorsements from both the Beacon Journal and Cuyahoga Falls News Press, a weekly.  We say mystical because, as we've written, the mayor has never aspired to the BJ's goal of regional cooperation.  In fact, Robart has no bipartisan  ties with Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic and has preferred to administer a municipal island in the county.

As for the News Press, it complimented Robart for an "exciting vision for the the city's future."

Some of that, oddly, will depend on federal dollars, scorned by the hard right, to pay for the excitement.  (I tire of reporting  that I attended a Tea Party Rescue America Tax Day rally in the Falls in which he welcomed the throng as the social, moral and fiscal conscience of America.  Right. They also help shut down the government,  as we have since witnessed.

As the Falls Press noted in its endorsement, "He also hopes to use federal money to upgrade vacant homes,  secure federal  funds to improve the streetscape  from Chestnut Boulevard south to the city limits and work with the schools to possibly increase the city income tax to help pay for construction of a new high school/middle school  campus." (Lord.  New taxes? More excitement!)

By the way, let the record show that the BJ editorial writers never had anything good to say about Arshinkoff's often unruly political hijinks -  the same party financier who is said to be preparing the nuclear TV bomb.

As for me, why can't I dismiss the fact  that Robart played his socially conservative card by successfully opposing a discounted family rate at the Natatorium to a gay couple, one of whom was a wounded Iraqi veteran who wanted to rehab at the Nat?

Personal note:  We moved out of the Falls 14 years ago.  As we grew older, we couldn't take the excitement.

Tim Gorbach: Making so much sense

THE ISSUE  of offering family rates to a gay married couple  at the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium can now be hung in Tea Party Mayor Don Robart's office as one of his less distinguished deeds however his surrogates choose to define it.  But the record would not be complete without inserting a definitive  appeal  from another official for passage before a Republican majority defeated it with the mayor''s best wishes.

In supporting a family rate for the couple ( which included a wounded Iraqi veteran) , Tim  Gorbach, the Democratic chairman of the Parks and Recreation Board, addressed the financial cost of changing the rate structure and just as importantly, the inequality of conflicting rates between the Natatorium and Water Works, which has a more liberal policy.

To questions  raised by the discount's opponents, Gorbach said the Natatorium's annual revenue would be reduced by $49,000  - or 1 pct. of the annual budget. As of the end of April, he reported, the Natatorium had net savings of more than $100,000.

"Without reducing any services, we have already more than doubled the amount necessary to account for the projected shortfall, he told the Board.

He  said he was "very uncomfortable" with the conflicting rate structures of the two entities under the Parks board, calling the Natatorium's "discriminatory."   "I think as a board we should be moving at the speed of light to  correct this dichotomy and remove much discriminatory nuances in our Natatorium rate structure as possible.'"

He then struck on a significant element that shaped the issue:   "I   feel  very strongly that we need to apply our discount opportunities more evenly for our membership.  We tout in   all of our literature how we are family friendly.  In fact, our motto  is 'whole fitness for the whole family.'  Well,  I believe we are coming  up short in our discount plan options for this to be true."

I would add that considering the minuscule effect on the budget that so concerned the mayor and Republican board members, you had to look for underlying motives to rejecting the request of  a same-sex married couple.

I  know the Republican majority ignored the board chairman's  plea and for the foreseeable future the issue is dead.  But it is refreshing to hear a public official in the Falls making so much sense on a matter that was so symbolic for a community's openness to today's social landscape.  And for that reason alone,  I've posted this report.

The Tea Party will be back in the Falls to clutter the debate

TODAY'S NOTICE is to alert you about another political revival in Cuyahoga Falls on April 15. Not by coincidence, it has been scheduled by Tea Partyers on the Christian Sabbath to ululate about the burden of government and taxes - the precise deadline for you and me to have paid up our share of America's overhead. I should tell you right off that I'm not enthralled by taxes, either. But being a reasonably good citizen, I know of no other way to pay for a lot of things that we would not want to do without. Nor do the Teabaggers, for that matter. So they take the cheapest way out by wailing about the overhead while driving to rallies on roads that we all, of necessity, must pay for, or by calling the cops on the slightest fear of the mysterious light on the next block. Emergency health care, even for someone who might pass out at one of these events? Don't get me started.

For this group, the Falls is becoming the preferred Garden of Eden for indignant right-wingers, like Myrtle Beach is for Ohio golfers. There have been previous Tea Party congregations there, and not an election passes that people like Rick Santorum doesn't show up on the Riverfront Mall to preach his final sermon before losing the Republican primary the next day. One of the reasons, I suspect is that Don Robert, Summit county Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff's favorite mayor, presides over the city's political and spiritual agenda much of the time, completing the exercise with Arshinkoff, who serves as the tail wagging the tail.

For this year's tax day, the Republican headliners will be Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who slipped into the U.S. Senate race with a warehouse full of money before the big guys in Columbus could find somebody more likely to win; State Sen. Frank LaRose, who cast the deciding vote (after indicating that he wouldn't) to pass Senate Bill 5, which restricted collective bargaining and was destroyed in a referendum; and U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, one of four congressmen who has a piece of Summit County following shameful GOP redistricting.

All would probably tell you that they are not really Tea Partyers, but this is an election year, so the safe thing to do is to attend these events to whip up the crowd by endorsing what Tea Partyers stand for. My ancestors had a clever way of innocently fending off such criticism. "Shou baddi aamel" - What am I supposed to do?"

A couple of things that don't make a helluva lot of sense to me: These anti-government blowhards are all on the government payroll with perks that you wouldn't believe. They also will be appearing on the Riverfront mall at the Pavilion, a convenient stage that was enabled by Federal tax money. (They didn't tell you that?)

Still more hypocritical is the fact that LaRose and Mandel are Iraqi vets who will be appearing to make hay in a town where the mayor would be expected to veto any move by City Council to give a same-sex marriage couple family rates at the Natatorium. Robart's position is even more repugnant in the fact that one of the spouses is a wounded Iraqi veteran. I doubt there will be a single word about this on April 15.

The issue isn't dead. Councilwoman Diana Colavecchio, a Democrat, says the six Democrats on council shares her belief that there should be equitable rates for all Natatorium members, but faced with a a threat of a veto she would fail to reach the 8-vote threshold to override Robart since the five Republican council members are siding with the mayor. One even expressed fear that otherwise he was afraid it would trouble some people, biblically.

On April 12, the matter goes back to the parks board with a possible opening. Both Colavecchio and board chairman Tim Gorbach, a Democrat, say they have dicovered a contradiction between two of the operations that the Board oversees- the Natatorium and Water Works Park. The latter has nothing in its rules denying a discount to same-sex couples but the Natatorium does. "It will take some time," says Gorbach, a Democrat who supports the couple's request, "but we'll have to find a way to reconcile the two to grant the discount."

That's the kind of leadership by him and Colavecchio lacking at City Hall, where religion and politics collide to enfeeble the idea of equality..

Bad days for GOP in Indiana and Cuyahoga Falls

WHAT A COINCIDENCE! While Republicans in Ohio and other states are eagerly trying to rig voting laws to crush un-rampant "voter fraud", they really didn't need Charlie White, Indiana's secretary of state, to mess up the Republican brand of honesty and decency. On the other hand, he does prove that fraudulent votes are a living issue, at least at the highest levels of state government.

White, you may have heard, has just been convicted on six felonies: three for voter fraud, two for perjury and one for theft. And wouldn't you know that when he campaigned for secretary of state in 2010 he described "election integrity" as a major issue and reassured the voters thusly: "Charlie will protect and defend Indiana's Voter ID to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our our democracy - voting."

That noble claim has since been removed from his website.

Back in Ohio, where fraud has been determined to be virtually non-existent, the GOP lawmakers are continuing their fraudulent quest to deny many voters, as Charlie White once described it, their "most basic and precious right." (Voters that the GOP has profiled as Democrats.) They are said to be hopeful of offering a revised restrictive law before...yep...the November presidential election. The Plain Dealer has quoted our own Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, as saying he wants the current voting law - a newer version that was downright political porn - to be repealed to avoid "voter confusion".

Sorry, Jon, but nobody seems to be more confused about voting rights than the lawmakers on your side.

* * * * *

The way things are going at City Hall in Cuyahoga Falls, Mayor Don Robart may yet have to concede we are living in 2012. His unyielding denial to a request by a same-sex marriage couple seeking family rates at the Natatorium is now in its next phase with the city's law director saying a rate adjustment could be possible. The mayor first declared that nothing could be done because state law prohibits it. It soon became known that it is, in fact, being exercised at other places in Ohio.

Now Robart is resorting to his look into the distant past, telling the Beacon Journal as he groped for an explanation (beyond his probable cultural bias) that rates have been in place for more than 40 years, so why change them now? If so, what other rates- utilities, taxes, etc. - haven't been changed during the same period? ? But Robart continues to resist, saying if same-sex couples are granted family rates it could lead to "massive abuse" by unmarried heterosexual couples. To borrow a term from Robert's GOP county chairman, that,of course, would "be a scandal of Biblical proportions."

To make the mayor's stance even flimsier, the couple applying for the family rate - Coty and Shane May, who were married in Washington, D.C., involves a wounded Iraqi veteran who would use the pool as part of his rehab. That, you must admit, is about as tsk-tsk as the you can get about the mayor.

Think of it: A GI who nearly lost his life in Iraq and moves about with a cane now finds his appeal resisted by a mayor who has nothing more to support his position than he simply doesn't like the idea. Cash it in, mayor. You're not holding the winning cards.