Greater financial accountability needs to be Cuyahoga County’s watchword in 2025: editorial

As Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne prepares to start his third year in office, a New Year’s resolution is in order: I resolve to improve the county’s financial health and oversight as overspending and poor financial controls continue to take their toll.

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Cuyahoga County Council needs to make the same resolution.

Under the county’s reform charter government, Ronayne names the county treasurer — subject to the advice and consent of County Council. Which means the county’s direct financial leadership and oversight is vested in an appointee, not elected official.

So, when County Inspector General Alexa Beel calls out the County Sheriff’s Department not once but three times for financial mismanagement, errors and questionable spending over the last two years, the buck stops at Ronayne’s desk — and at the door of County Council.

And when the county announces it will start 2025 with a budget $25 million in the red, the fault for not belt-tightening and not subjecting county operations to a detailed overhaul traces to the same two places.

Ronayne bears the chief blame for not tightening the reins on county spending and oversight, of course. The continued problems in the sheriff’s office highlight the need to do a deep dive into how financial controls are exercised — and whether new sources of revenue might be needed. Sheriff’s office overtime is helping to drive the county’s deficit, but public safety remains a key goal. Might there be a creative way to generate county revenue specifically for public safety?

Still, these issues didn’t crop up overnight.

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The recent county inspector general findings on $815,000 of unauthorized credit-card spending by the Sheriff’s Department over the last five years highlights the depth of the problem, and the extent of oversight failures.

How was it possible that the county didn’t catch this unauthorized spending earlier? Were financial controls so lax that, say, more than $160,000 per year for unvetted credit-card spending (dividing the total by five years, although annual spending likely varied) fell under the radar?

The consequence of this “oversight” also added up – more than $5,700 paid as part of these unauthorized credit-card payments for county sales taxes that weren’t actually owed, and $8,000 in potential credit-card rewards left on the table, the inspector general found.

Last year, the county’s main fiscal team did take control of the County Jail Commissary account, cleveland.com has reported, after Beel, the IG, found more than $600,000 in commissary items and monies not accounted for or misused.

Yet that was followed by an IG report earlier this year noting that Cuyahoga County had spent more than $1 million on a jail management system that was never used. How in the world could that have happened?

Cleveland.com’s Lucas Daprile did the autopsy: “Fixation from top county officials on a contract signing bonus. County Council being left in the dark on what, exactly, they were approving. A failure to notice monthly charges for an unused service. Lost opportunities to recoup taxpayer money. And a government contractor who made mistakes with zero accountability,” he found.

Note the item about County Council being left in the dark on what they were approving.

The same 2009 reform that created the county executive role also designated Cuyahoga County’s 11-member council to be a legislative check on county operations, spending and oversight — not a doormat.

Yet, instead of exercising that checks-and-balances role, County Council too often nods its collective head as spending balloons, or even adds to the problem.

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Exhibit 1: The individual $6 million slush funds per council member that County Council created with pandemic funds. In 2022, that added up to $66 million worth of pet projects diverted into their districts.

Exhibit 2: The more than $40 million County Council ponied up, also in 2022 — and without a vote of the people – to help turn the original MedMart white elephant into the next iteration of a supposed swan with expanded meeting space for conventions. That was after Swan Version 2, the Global Center for Health Innovation, fizzled. Never mind that the root of this rolling boondoggle has been a non-voted quarter-percent sales tax adopted under the former county commissioner form of government – and continued.

What is to be done?

Ronayne and his finance team have to stop trying to please everyone and start looking for places to cut and/or raise new revenues. County Council has to throw away the doormat and become deeply invested in questioning every spending decision the county makes. Maybe then the county can start 2025 on a fiscally more positive and responsible note.

About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer — the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.

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