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ont let your vote get wasted.

Issue 3 gets all the buzz in Tuesdays election. If passed,
it would amend the state constitution to permit an oligopoly of 10 commercial producers to cultivate and sell marijuana
for recreational and medicinal purposes.
If you want the weed, then you must do the deed: Vote.
If you dont want the weed, you must still do the deed: Vote.
And how about Issue 1? It creates a bipartisan, public process
for statewide legislative districting.
In Cuyahoga County, Issue 8 calls for a 10-year extension on
an arts funding initiative fueled by a cigarette tax, and Issue 9
increases scal oversight of taxpayer dollars.
Then there is the battle for Lakewood Hospital: Should it stay
or should it go? Voters get to weigh in on Charter Amendment 64.
And let us not forget that soap-opera to the south the race
for Akron mayor.
Longtime Mayor Don Plusquellic retired in a snit last May. He was
replaced by Garry Moneypenny, who subsequently resigned after
admitting he had inappropriate contact with a female city employee.
Current Mayor Jeff Fusco did not run for re-election. Democratic
Party apparatchik Daniel Horrigan looks like a shoo-in.
It all depends on who votes. Make a difference.

Endorsement roundup

ollowing are the editorial boards endorsements for the Nov.

3 election. Copies of the endorsement editorials themselves,
containing video of the mayoral endorsement interviews
and audio for most races, can be found at cleveland.com/opinion.

Statewide issues

CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL

Issue 1: Redistricting reform:

Vote yes.

Ward 16: No endorsement

Issue 2: Anti-monopoly language in Ohio Constitution:

Vote yes.

County issue 8: Renewal of

excise tax on cigarettes to fund
the arts: Vote yes.

Issue 3: Marijuana legalization

via 10 grow sites: Vote no.

County issue 9: Amend county charter for more independent

audit committee: Vote yes.

Cuyahoga County
MAYORS
Bedford Heights: Fletcher
Berger
Berea: Cyril Kleem
Brooklyn: Kathleen Pucci
Chagrin Falls: William A.
Tomko
Euclid: Kirsten Holzheimer Gail
Highland Heights: Scott E.
Coleman
Highland Hills: Frank Young
Independence: Anthony L.
Togliatti
Lakewood: Michael P. Summers
Maple Heights: Annette M.
Blackwell
Mayeld Village: Brenda Tedeschi Bodnar
Parma: Timothy J. DeGeeter
Seven Hills: Richard
DellAquila
South Euclid: Georgine Welo

ISSUES

Lorain County
MAYORS
Avon Lake: Gregory J. Zilka
Elyria: Holly C. Brinda
Lorain: Chase M. Ritenauer
North Ridgeville: G. David
Gillock

Portage County
MAYORS
Streetsboro: Glenn M. Broska
Tallmadge: David G. Kline

Summit County

MUNICIPAL JUDGES
Bedford: Michelle Paris

Macedonia: Sylvia Hanneken

Cleveland, Jan. 1 term: Suzan

Marie Sweeney

Northeld: Jesse J. Nehez

Lakewood: Patrick Carroll

Richeld Village: Bobbie Beshara

Stow: Sara L. Drew
Tallmadge: David G. Kline
Twinsburg: Ted Yates

About our editorials

Editorials express the view of our editorial board:

Elizabeth Sullivan
Opinion Director,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

Andrea Hogben
President,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

George Rodrigue
Editor,
Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

Chris Quinn
Vice President of Content,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

Kevin OBrien
Deputy Editorial Page Editor,
Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

Sharon Broussard
Editorial Writer,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

Christopher Evans
Editorial Writer,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

Peter Krouse
Editorial Writer,
Northeast Ohio Media Group

Thomas Suddes
Editorial Writer

Ted Diadiun
Editorial Writer

As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen

as the voice of our organizations. Got a question or a comment?
Contact Opinion Director Elizabeth Sullivan at 216-999-4688
or esullivan@cleveland.com. To comment directly on any
editorial, column or cartoon; to read more letters to the editor;
for information on how to submit a letter or opinion column
and to contact other members of the editorial board, go to
cleveland.com/opinion

grodrigue@plaind.com

Effectively bringing home lessons

learned about lead poisoning
A

while back, in another city,

I sat in on a conversation
among newspaper readers.
They knew that a bunch of editors
were sitting behind a giant sheet
of one-way glass.
The moderator asked them, If
the paper could do just one thing
to make your lives better, what
would that be?
One of the panelists swiveled in
her chair, looked right at us, and
said, Get over yourselves. Youre
only a newspaper.
We laughed so hard that Im
sure our readers heard us in the
next room.
We are keenly aware of the limits of our own ability to change
the world, and yet, we keep trying
to be helpful. Our latest effort was
a report on the hazards that lead
poses to our children, and how
those hazards can be reduced. It
ran as a series on cleveland.com,
and ran as a special-section package in last Sundays paper.
Im writing about it now because I think it says some interesting things about how we cover
stories like this, and how readers
can best experience them.
Last spring, when I first mentioned our plans to offer more solutions journalism, some readers
worried that wed be engaging in
theoretical political advocacy. As
this series indicates, what were
really doing is looking for things

that have been proven to work

elsewhere in the real world, and
trying to bring those lessons home
to Cleveland. For this series, we explored how Rochester, New York,
managed to cut its rate of lead poisoning among children by 80 percent. Some authorities use a threshold rate of 5 micrograms of lead per
deciliter of blood as a threshold level for lead poisoning. By that standard, Rochester has driven its level
of lead poisoning down to about
one-third Clevelands level.
The secret to Rochesters success was its decision to look for
lead hazards before children were
poisoned, and to enforce existing
laws requiring remediation of lead.
Some readers also worried that
every solutions story would
amount to a call for more public
spending. In this case, our reporting indicated that the public
would save a great deal of money
if we attacked the lead problem
seriously. We reported on research
saying that lead poisoning:
3 Is closely correlated, across
many nations, with rates of violent crime.
3 Imposes high costs on the
schools, which must try to educate
children with serious mental and
behavioral problems caused by lead.
3 Imposes costs on families and
on the health care system for lifelong health problems directly related to the toxin.

Mark Naymik |

Lakewood issue 64: Preventing closure of Lakewood Hospital: Vote no.

MAYORS
Akron: Dan Horrigan

Cleveland, Jan. 3 term: Ed

Wade

George Rodrigue |

Cleveland issue 20: Changing

civil service rules to promote
more diversity in hiring: Vote
yes.

Parma Heights Issue 91: Fireghter and rescue stafng and

outsourcing: Vote no.

Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

Virginia Wang, General Manager
George Rodrigue, Editor

Andrea Hogben, President

Chris Quinn, Vice President of Content
Elizabeth Sullivan, Opinion Director

Editorial

Cast your vote,

make a difference

* MN Sunday, November 1, 2015

Solutions also matter at the individual level, of course. And lead

poisoning is not purely a problem
of the poor. It can affect any child
living in an older home, or playing on contaminated soil. Many
children who should be tested for
lead are not. We created a quick
test to help parents decide whether their children should be tested.
We also created a guide, including
interactive graphics, to steps parents can take if their child tests
positive for lead.
Finally, some of our readers
have asked how best to read indepth series online. There can be a
lot of content, and it can run over
many days. How best to nd it?
For many of these solutions stories, our colleagues and Northeast
Ohio Media Group, which manages cleveland.com, will create
special online pages. In this case,
that page is called cleveland.com/
kids-health. It can be directly accessed by clicking the blue label
atop each installment of the series under the heading, Special
Series: Toxic Neglect.
Plain Dealer reporters also
generally produce what we call
an anchor post with each major
series. Its a sort of explanatory
index to the collection of stories,
photos, video, and graphics, and
its generally the first thing we
post as we launch the series. Well
update it, as we did with the lead

series, to include new links as the

series rolls out.
Sometimes we group all the
comments on a series under the
anchor post, so that readers can
have one place to pose questions
or share their thoughts. Our reporters will respond to those comments. Comments made early in
the publication cycle can influence what future stories say.
For print, then, the team at our
Publication Hub will collect the
digital report, edit and shape it
for print, try to package it logically, and add appropriate graphics. The printed report sometimes
will not be as extensive as what
we offered digital audiences, but
it may well be more focused and
curated.
In the future, Id like to see us
share more things sooner with
the larger community. Id like to
give more people more of an opportunity to share their perspectives with us, and to tell us what
questions they think are most
important.
But first, I should ask: How
does our publication system for
this kind of series work for you?
Does our system make sense to
you? Does it work well for you?
How could we make it better, either in print or online?
Rodrigue is the editor
of The Plain Dealer.

mnaymik@cleveland.com

Some races and places to consider

before marking Election Day ballots
P

olitics in Northeast Ohio

s u b u r b s c a n b e p e t t y,
prickly and imperfect. My
colleagues and I have covered a
little of each this election season.
But I feel the need to highlight a
few races and places as another
reminder that voters need to pay
attention.
Lets start with a few short
notebook items.
Brooklyn: Talk about an October
surprise. Police busted Brooklyn
law director and mayoral candidate Scott Claussen this week in
a drug raid in Seven Hills.
Claussen, who has the support
of several prominent Democrats
and raised 10 times more campaign money than his nearest
opponent, has a lot of explaining
to do before Tuesday. Im sure
theres a logical reason police say
they found Claussen cutting up
prescription pills with a credit
card.
Do I really need to tell voters
they would be smart to consider
one of Claussens four challengers:
City Council President Katherine
Gallagher and Councilwoman
Kathleen Pucci and residents
Mary Lee Bowen and Michael
Chanegri. (Mayor Richard Balbier
is not seeking re-election.)
Cleveland Heights: Six candidates running for three at-large
seats offer the range of standard
positions on several issues before
the inner-ring suburb, including
a proposed income-tax hike and
vacant-housing problem.
But one candidate Julie
Love stands out. And it has
nothing to do with her respectable positions of opposing the
tax increase or demanding more
transparency from the suburbs
government.
A freelance writer, Love sounds
ignorant in some of her writings.
She has referred to Muslims as
the enemy. And she described
President Barack Obama as a fascist kingpin in the headline on an
article about Obamas opposition
to the AR-15 rie.

Points to Love for exercising

her First Amendment rights, but
the mellow-minded Cleveland
Heights residents deserve a more
thoughtful representative.

or keep open the park basketball

court, the settlement will hurt. If
Brownlee wants to be the citys
savior, he should do it with more
maturity.

Lakewood: This large lakefront

inner-ring suburb has great people, great vistas and great politics.
But the future of Lakewood Hospital has consumed the race for
mayor, which pits incumbent Michael Summers against State Sen.
Michael Skindell.
Summers supports closing of
the money-losing hospital and
replacing it with a family health
center and emergency room.
Skindell says the hospital is still
a viable asset and he is ghting
to keep it open. Apparently, there
are other issues in Lakewood that
need attention but Skindell
isnt highlighting them.

Stow: The battle for Stow clerk of

courts is my pick for nastiest race.
Its mudslingers are incumbent
Kevin Coughlin, a Republican
who is running as a nonpartisan;
Republican Don Robart, the former Cuyahoga Falls mayor; and
Democrat and former clerk Diana
Colavecchio, who lost to Coughlin.
Colavecchio and Robart have
accused Coughlin of spending
more time making money as a lobbyist than doing his $100,000-ayear clerk job.
Coughlin says Colavecchio left
the clerks ofce in disarray and
claims the only thing worse than
a lobbyist is a pervert. In a recent
campaign mailer, tilted PERV
ALERT, Coughlin bashed Robart
as Dirty Don and an embarrassment to our community.
Coughlin is referring to a 2014
police investigation that found
pornography and campaign materials on the city computer Robart used as mayor. The investigation did not result in any charges
against Robart.
Hold your nose when picking a
candidate in this one.

Maple Heights: This dying suburb is losing a political personality in Mayor Jeffrey Lansky, who
is not running for re-election. Two
candidates want to replace him:
business owner Annette Blackwell
and Councilman Bill Brownlee.
While Brownlees grandstanding and self-righteous air would
make him an entertaining mayor,
Blackwells experience and quiet
demeanor make her the right
choice.
Brownlee, who is working harder than Blackwell on the campaign trial, also has a penchant
for suing the city. Earlier this
year, Brownlee correctly pointed
out that the city had been violating open records laws by failing
to keep proper minutes of meetings. But he and another resident
decided to sue the city rather than
broker a correction and leave it at
that.
Next week, the council is expected to vote on settling the suit
for $22,000, according to city records. Nearly all the money will
go the attorneys who filed the
case on behalf of Brownlee and
the resident, who could pocket a
few hundred bucks each. In a city
that cant afford to pick up leaves

Macedonia: Ive saved this northern Summit County suburb for

last because I need to explain why
it has earned my pick as most dysfunctional non-inner-ring suburb.
(The competition was erce.)
On Tuesday, voters can help
themselves by picking Councilwoman Sylvia Hanneken, who
is best suited to be mayor and
change the direction of the suburb.
Macedonias bumbling mayor,
Don Kuchta, is not seeking reelection, which is a good thing.
Hes at the center of a couple of
messes, including a failed attempt
to oust the citys nance director,
who in turn revealed that the mayor had been receiving free trash
pickup and snowplowing services

through a city program reserved

for cash-strapped seniors.
City Council, Kuchta and the
mayors attack dog, law director
Joe Diemert, have spent a ridiculous amount of energy and money
ghting over the credibility of the
nance director, among other issues.
The city is also embroiled in a
money-sucking lawsuit led by a
Macedonia property owner upset
by the citys efforts to reverse its
approval of a lot split. Tangled up
in the suit are Diemert and his
pal, Joe Migliorini, who developed
the subdivision in question and
served as mayor of Macedonia
from 1988 until 2001.
Diemert has announced hes
stepping down as law director in
December. But Migliorini wants
back in City Hall and is running
for mayor.
Migliorini, who has developed
housing and commercial projects in the city, said he believes
he can rescue the city from its
dysfunction at least when hes
not spending time at his house in
Florida.
He can certainly point to many
accomplishments. But he should
quit while hes ahead. Theres no
place at City Hall for his large ego
or petulance.
During the public comment
portion of a September council
meeting, Migliorini showed off
his thin skin by threatening to
sue Hanneken and another councilwoman over disparaging comments he said they made about
him during the campaign.
Im going to tell you that you
should go see your attorney because I am going to put a defamation of character on you, he
warned with the bluster of a
WWE wrestler.
Migliorinis suppor ters
including Diemer t argue
Hanneken is part of the problem.
But based on demeanor alone,
Hanneken wins my vote. Voters
should make sure Migliorini has
more time to spend in Florida,
where the warm weather might
help him chill out.