Taxpayers already know the botched purchase involved poor planning and inadequate oversight. Now, thanks to new federal charges, they can add corruption to the list of factors. Still needed is a full accounting of what went wrong, who was responsible and whether Cuyahoga County taxpayers can recoup any of their misspent millions.

Making sense of county's purchase of Ameritrust complex appears to be a job that only corruption investigators can do: editorial

Published: Saturday, June 09, 2012, 8:26 PM

By The Plain Dealer Editorial BoardThe Plain Dealer

Chuck Crow, The Plain DealerThe long-abandoned rotunda and gutted 28-story tower of the Ameritrust complex.

Eventually, the ongoing internal investigation ordered by County Executive Ed FitzGerald and continuing efforts of federal prosecutors may reveal exactly how Cuyahoga County wound up with the money pit that is the former Ameritrust complex.

Taxpayers already know the botched purchase involved poor planning and inadequate oversight. Now, thanks to new federal charges, they can add corruption to the list of factors. Still needed is a full accounting of what went wrong, who was responsible and whether Cuyahoga County taxpayers can recoup any of their misspent millions.

When the full story emerges, it probably will include dashes of hubris -- some of the former county commissioners loved the grandeur of the old bank lobby's Tiffany-style rotunda -- as well as some sincere good intent: The county, having announced it was looking for a new headquarters, got lots of encouragement from City Hall and other downtown interests to do something that would help revitalize the area around Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street.

But when using the public's money, outcome matters more than motivation.

Commissioners Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones very clearly overpaid for a property that was shot through with asbestos and had been vacant for more than a decade, in large measure because it was so inadequate as modern office space. Once they had purchased the property, they bickered among themselves and with local planners and preservationists over what to do with it.

 

While they dithered, the bills mounted to more than $45 million and the economy cratered. The public ended up with a white elephant that FitzGerald's administration now hopes to unload.

Many of FitzGerald's questions have revolved around the $3 million the county paid a Texas real estate consultant hired to evaluate potential sites. He has asked the county's inspector general to examine the deal and the county's Law Department to evaluate suing the former Staubach Co. to recover some of that money.

'Federal prosecutors added another piece to the puzzle last week when they issued an updated indictment against attorney Anthony O. Calabrese III, who they claim is at the center of several plot lines. Calabrese was one of Staubach's lawyers. The indictment alleges that Calabrese recruited county insider J. Kevin Kelley to get Dimora on board with the Ameritrust deal, then paid him $70,000 after the purchase.

In another of the startling details that demonstrate how brazen the county's Gimme Culture had become, the indictment also alleges that after the initial federal raid, Calabrese and Kelley met to discuss how to impede investigators. Not realizing that Kelley was already cooperating with the feds, Calabrese suggested a safe meeting spot: the jury room assigned to the since-disgraced Judge Bridget McCafferty.

All of this adds up to a reminder of how difficult the Ameritrust deal may be to unravel -- and how central it remains to the story of the former county government's failure to serve the people of Cuyahoga County wisely and honestly.

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