What is the City's Plan to make Cleveland Lead Safe?

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Residents First

Lead and Amnesia

History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland

Lead Safe Certificate Law

Mayor Bibb makes a sharp turn from Lead Safe to Lead Free, but performance lags expectation

• May. 04, 2025. Cleveland.com. $11.9 million: Cleveland may again lose millions meant to keep kids safe from lead over slow spending "Cleveland risks forfeiting $11.9 million in federal funding to remove lead from homes — a critical tool for protecting children — because City Hall once again failed to spend the money fast enough. Cleveland won two federal grants in 2020 and 2022 worth $15.4 million to identify and remove lead from homes to protect children from lead poisoning. But a mixture of City Hall’s own admitted issues — along with strict federal guidelines on spending — have made getting money out the door challenging. Mayor Justin Bibb has $11.9 million left to spend, but both grants are set to expire this year, with $7.6 million expiring on May 30. Initially, the idea that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would expand these grants and postpone the expiration seemed possible, Community Development Director Alyssa Hernandez told Cleveland City Council. But it’s now unclear if President Donald Trump’s administration will do so." 

• Apr. 10, 2025. cleveland.com. Cleveland enlists workers across City Hall to tackle backlog of lead-safe applications. "Cleveland has cleared a backlog of 1,200 lead-safe applications ahead of schedule after enlisting volunteers from across City Hall to tackle the logjam. The cleared backlog lets the city refocus on the bigger issue: trying to make real progress on preventing childhood lead poisoning. The bureaucratic bottleneck was originally expected to take six months and was tying up key staffers as they reviewed paperwork submitted by landlords. But Cleveland’s Health Director Dr. David Margolius said workers from four other city departments were brought in to help Building & Housing review 1,000 applications in about a month." Good work! Thanks to all the CLASHers who were working behind the scenes to make the backlog a front burner issue. More here.

• February 3, 2025. Signal Cleveland. Mayor Justin Bibb’s $2.1 billion budget calls for tackling blight. First Cleveland needs more staff to do it. "The latest spending plan shows the city will have work to do filling code enforcement vacancies.Cleveland will have around 30 code enforcement vacancies to fill this year, according to Mayor Justin Bibb’s 2025 budget proposal. "This year’s spending plan calls for 120 positions in the code enforcement division of the Building and Housing Department. Only 92 people worked there as of December 2024, according to the budget estimate. In a letter introducing the budget proposal, Bibb wrote that “tackling blight through aggressive enforcement” would be a key priority."

• October 17, 2024. Signal Cleveland. Mayor Justin Bibb shakes up Cleveland’s flagging effort to stop children from being lead poisoned. "Bibb wants to push for a higher standard of lead inspections in Cleveland rental properties. His executive order surprised the people who have been helping City Hall carry out its lead program for the last several years. A shakeup is coming to Cleveland’s multimillion-dollar fight against lead paint. In an executive order this week, Mayor Justin Bibb argued that the city’s five-year-old effort to clear household lead hazards was ineffective. The order came as a surprise to people who have worked for years to help City Hall carry out its battle against lead. Now the mayor is reaching for a more expensive and difficult goal: lead abatement. The term “abatement” means the full removal or permanent containment of lead in a house. That could entail replacing walls, baseboards, windows, doors – any surface coated with lead-based paint before the substance was banned in 1978. Chipped and peeling lead-based paint that was applied to homes decades ago still poses a risk to children. Cleveland, with its old housing stock, has one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country."

• Oct 14, 2024. WEWS. Cleveland pivots certification process to tackle lead paint hazards

• Oct. 14, 2024. Cleveland.com. Worse than Flint: 4 takeaways from Cleveland’s big lead poisoning hearing

• October 14, 2024. Channel 3 News. City of Cleveland determined to lower lead poisoning cases; Mayor Bibb takes action. "Mayor Justin Bibb signs executive order requiring anyone who owns or rents a home built before 1978 get additional testing."

• Oct. 15, 2024. SpectrumNews1. Public health leaders raise alarm bells about lead crisis in Cleveland

• October 14, 2024. Ideastream Public Media. Cleveland officials meet to address shortcomings in lead testing, remediation efforts. 

• Enforcement and Endorsement. October 21, 2024. Tracking Cleveland’s efforts to crack down on lead paint hazards. "We told you last week that Cleveland City Hall is shaking up its efforts against lead paint in rental homes. Here’s another angle on the city’s fight against lead." 

• Oct. 11, 2024 cleveland.com Five years in, Cleveland’s much-touted lead-safe law has failed to reduce child lead poisoning

• CHILDHOOD LEAD EXPOSURE IN CLEVELAND, OH DATA BRIEF OCTOBER 2024 (this was the report that triggered the Mayor's Executive Order

What is the City's plan to make Cleveland Lead Safe?

Back in 2019 when CLASH forced City Council to enact the Lead Safe Certificate Program, the deal was that City Council and Mayor Frank Jackson would enact the ordinance and their public-private partners, the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, would implement the program.

Cleveland has two operating entities providing lead safe programs.

• City Departments that have legal authority to implement city and state laws concerning lead using tax revenue, fees, and grants. Departments include the Department of Building and Housing, Cleveland Department of Public Health, the Department of Community Development, and the Cleveland Law Department. 

  • • In an effort to coordinate among the City Departments, CLASH asked Mayoral candidates to appoint a cabinet level Lead Czar whose job would be to coordinate the lead programs across the departmental lines. In 2022, Mayor Justin Bibb appointed Karen Dettmer, a former Health Department employee, to be his "lead czar". Her independence quickly evaporated as she joined the LSCC Board and and moved her base of operations the City Department of Building and Housing, not the Mayor's office.

• The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition (LSCC) carries out lead related programs (public information, loans/grants for property owners, and research using mostly private donations from corporations, United Way, and private foundations through their non-profit operating entities including the Lead Resource Center, the CHN Housing Partners, Enterprise Community Partners and others. 

  • • LSCC is an unincorporated association of nonprofit entities most of which receive funding through LSCC and each of which has a vote on the Steering Committee of LSCC. There are two "chiefs". The Mount Sinai Health Foundation (Mitchell Balk) and the Enterprise Community Partners (Ayonna Blue Donald). Here's the latest configuration.

    • Over the past four years (2019-2022), LSCC has gained control of the oversight of the city program without offering much, if any, information about how LSCC operates.

Examples of LSCC control of city departments

• Ms. Blue Donald is the former Director of Building and Housing who set up the overall strategy for the Cleveland Lead Safe Certificate program, before moving over to Enterprise, A fiscal agent for LSCC. 

• While Director of B&H, Ms. Blue Donald gave an unbid contract to the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Center on Poverty to be the independent Lead Safe Auditor for the Department of Building and Housing. Dr. Robert Fischer is the primary staff person who is evaluating the city's progress at implementing the Lead Safe Certificate. Dr. Fischer is on both the City's Lead Safe Advisory Board and the LSCC Data Committee. 

The 2019 Lead Safe Certificate Law established a Lead Safe Advisory Board includes Dr. Fisher, and 7 citizen members, five of whom are nominated by the LSCC and appointed by the Mayor. The auditor reports, meeting minutes and videos were posted on the CWRU website. Now they aren't posted anywhere.

From it's inception, LSCC has promoted strategy of voluntary cooperation through financial incentives. In a presentation in 2019, Dan Cohn of the Mt. Sinai Foundation wrote "Older, post-industrial cities such as Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York, have found that the vast majority of childhood lead poisoning occurs in rental units—often one- and two-unit properties—that are owned by thousands of small-time landlords. These landlords are key partners in protecting children from lead hazards and therefore play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our country’s cities and towns." In a 2023 article, former Director of Building and Housing Ayonna Blue Donald stressed that "....the Lead Safe Coalition wants to work with landlords, even those who are naysayers to the entire process: 'We have a unique opportunity here to influence with carrots and to support landlords. That’s why we’re very willing to listen and shift things.' ” 

2023-2024-By 2023 it was becoming obvious that the  strategy was failing.
Here's some signs of change

• The shit hits the fan in October 2023. See Lead Safe Certificate

• October 25, 2022. Cleveland.com. Compromise saves Cleveland’s $17 million lead safety law: Stimulus Watch. A proposed $17M grant to LSCC was trimmed to send funds to the City Law Department to support enforcement

• Sep. 20, 2023. cleveland.com Cleveland prosecutes 50 owners of homes that poisoned children with lead "It’s a prosecution strategy that City Hall has not pursued in decades, and one that aligns with the city’s 'moral obligation…to fight for equitable, fair neighborhoods,' Bibb said."

• September 2024 -- Bibb proposes Residents First Legislation

• March 18, 2024  Ideastream Public Media Cleveland takes aim at absent landlords with 'aggressive' policies to help residents like these

• June 2024--Dan Cohn, the architect of LSCC makes a sudden departure from Mt. Sinai Health Foundation.

• June 2024 -- Mayor Bibb asks for citizens to apply for a vacant position on the Lead Safe Advisory Board. 

Public - Private Partnerships

The history of public-private partnerships in Cleveland is that the the private investment continues, but the program begins to shift towards the public sector after about 5 years as other public private investments grab the awareness of the Civic Elite.

• • • The Lead Safe Certificate program is 5 years old this year. In the life cycle of past public-private partnerships, the partnership  is reaching maturity when philanthropy turns operating costs over to the city and uses "it's money" for paying off landlords, hiring consultants, and running demo programs for the non-profit service sphere.

    • Consider "Say Yes to Cleveland" which spent most of 2023 scrounging for public funding as the funds for "wrap around services" disappeared. Next up for CMSD? Cuts and a possible property tax increase.  More on "Say Yes" below.

    • And...Mayor Bibb is standing up a new Violence Prevention Trust Fund with ARPA (temporary) dollars and foundation grants. 

What is a Public - Private Partnership?

A public - private partnership takes place when the public sector (Mayor, Council) wants to start a program without raising taxes or fees. The Philanthropic and Corporate sectors step forward to provide financing and management through a network of private non-profit corps.  The worst of both worlds!

In the case of lead safety, the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition was formed to provide lead info to residents through the Lead Safe Resource Center and financial assistance to landlords through the CHN Partners..in exchange for control of the city program through 3rd party advisors. Private sector jobs; no public accountability. Then, after a while, the private sector funding is converted to public funding going to the private non-profit corporations.

 Example: Mt. Sinai Foundation (fiscal agent for LSCC) is seeking $800.000 from Cuyahoga County for operation of the Lead Safe Resource Center--so far no itemized budget, list of goals and objectives, or staffing positions or salaries. Did Mt. Sinai Health Foundation run out of money to pay for this program they created? Hardly: Mt. Sinai Health Foundation awards medical school $2 million to accelerate new treatments for devastating diseases. What starts as a public-private partnership shifts over time to a system where the public sector pays and private sector hires without any public accountability. 

Meanwhile Environmental Health Watch which operates the LSCC funded Lead Safe Resource Center is a partner is a consortium of agencies providing technical assistance on environmental organizing thanks to a $10 million grant from US EPA. The Blacks in Green grantees recently sent staffers to the Climate Conference in Dubai.

In fact, in 2022, one of the representatives to the City's LEAD SAFE ADVISORY BOARD told the other board members that the city-paid City Lead Safe Auditor (CWRU) was not allowed to evaluate LSCC operations...he's only allowed to audit the City Departments. 

Another example: In 2019, civic leaders formed a public-private partnership to bring Say Yes to Education to Cleveland.  "Say Yes to Education helped provide startup experience and funding but has fully wound down its operations as anticipated in June 2021, with Say Yes Cleveland now fully independent and locally governed."  Part of that "full independence and local governance" has turned out to be frantic public appeals to the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to provide funding for the health, education and social service non-profits who provide supplemental services to students in the Cleveland Municipal School District. More on the struggle to find public dollars to support the private Say Yes employees.  UPDATE: Say Yes Cleveland family support specialist program gets $4.5 million from state budget. In 2025 a new crisis: ‘It could only get worse’: CMSD cutting spending, considering closing schools as state and federal cuts loom "If CMSD doesn’t reduce spending, it will run out of money completely by 2028, but district leaders want to make cuts sooner than that. Cleveland voters passed a levy in November that will infuse the district about $49 million a year. That money bought the district time but will not prevent deep cuts. If the district doesn’t find a way to save around $96 million before November, the state will put the district in “fiscal precaution” and take more direct oversight of the district’s finances."