A Recent History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland

Recent History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland and Ohio

Former Mayor Michael R. White in the early 1990s  faced pressure to act after testing revealed dangerous levels of lead in the blood of 86 percent of kids tested in Glenville, the neighborhood he’d represented. In 1993 Mayor White convened a summit at the Cleveland Convention Center that included 200 participants, including a panel of 45 national, state and local experts. [  ] Despite initial enthusiasm, over the next ten years projects that emerged from the summit either stalled or expired.

Mayor Jane Campbell, elected in 2001, also vowed to reduce the scourge. In 2004, Campbell announced that public and private agencies would join forces to eliminate childhood lead poisoning in 10 years. "We want to become a national model," Campbell said. The effort included plans to screen more children, enforce lead abatement laws and train more workers to remediate aging housing stock. It would be aided by a $1.6 million grant from the Saint Luke’s Foundation that would re-energize work of the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council.

In 2005 Cleveland enacted a Lead Safe Housing registry. No one ever registered.'

In 2006, the city’s health director and chair of the city’s public-private lead advisory council, Matt Carroll, acknowledged that neither of the city’s goals could be met. The work was stymied in part by federal cuts to lead prevention and remediation programs and by federal grants lost because of mismanagement and slow progress. 

2006 Efforts to hold Sherwin Williams liable.

•  RealNEO reports on Greater Cleveland Lead Action Committee GCLAC  

• Cleveland Scene did a retrospective of the Sherwin Williams campaign: Decade-Old Pro-Business Ohio Bill Let Lead-Paint Manufacturers Off the Hook for Paying for Cleanup

In 2016,  Cleveland Branch of the Federal Reserve bank held a symposium on childhood lead poisoning. 

2015-2018 Reporters Rachel Dissell and Brie Zeltner support the Toxic Neglect Series of articles. Some key examples:

• Oct. 20, 2015, Cleveland.com Toxic Neglect: Curing Cleveland's legacy of lead poisoning

• Oct. 02, 2016. cleveland.com. Cleveland's troubled Department of Public Health: A familiar story, decades in the making.

• Feb. 12, 2017. cleveland.com. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's concerns about rental inspections: Displacing poor families, burdening landlords

• Jan. 06, 2019 ‘An uphill battle’: Lead poisoning stunts students’ learning while Cleveland leaders fail to tackle lingering problem

2016 Toledo enacts Lead Safe Ordinance. City Club presentation on lead safety. Cleveland Lead Safe Network founded. Cleveland Lead Safe Network forms to prevent childhood lead poisoning\

2017 Councilman Jeff Johnson introduces a lead safe ordinance at Cleveland City Council. The legislation never got a hearing.

2018  Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing formed to create a citizen ballot initiative for lead safe certificate. 

2019  In light of the impending success of the CLASH Ballot initiative, Mayor Jackson and Cleveland City Council enact a watered down version Cleveland Lead Safe Certificate Program and create the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition (see below) to implement the program with a voluntary compliance model. 

2020 Unfunded and unacknowledged, CLASH reforms as a 501 c 3 Coalition of grassroots groups to promote lead awareness and monitor the implementation of the Lead Safe Certificate Law. Beginning in 2022, CLASH efforts were supplemented with support from US EPA in Chicago. Slowly CLASH is brought before Cleveland City Council to provide expert testimony about lead issues in Cleveland.

In 2021, Governor DeWine released a Lead Task Force Final Report. Three years after Dewine's State of the State message. the commission focused on child well being, but never mentioned lead poisoning. 

In May 2023, Ohio Department of Health adopted a new definition of lead poisoning called "elevated blood lead" Under ODH guidance, EBL is to be treated with outreach and education of parents during normal working hours. No inspections until a child's EBL reaches 10 mg/dl.  Wait! that was same the standard that Ohio used BEFORE the CDC standard issued in 2021.  A person who works in "the system" observed that the decision to make a change that was no change was "driven by economic considerations."

In January, Council and the Mayor build a departmental base (Residents First) at Building and Housing to support lead safety enforcement.

In September 2024 Mayor Bibb takes a turn (in the right direction) after three years of going down blind allies.

What was 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, former Director of Building and Housing). 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. Control of funds has been an issue from day one. In July, 2019, on a pew outside the City Council Committee Room, Spencer from CLASH suggested to Director Blue-Donald that the increase in the rental registration fee for rental property owners could be used to reimburse owners for the cost of a lead clearance test--a kind of incentive for their voluntary cooperation.... Blue-Donald told Spencer "that's my money."

• 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.

Clues about the future of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition

Bibb's comments on the status of Lead Safety: Reading between the lines.

Mayor Bibb's State of the City interview with Channel 5. "Bibb said the city and its partners at the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition had the best intentions in 2019, when Cleveland passed a law requiring all residential rental properties to pass periodic tests showing they are lead-safe— not free of lead, but free of hazards. 'But what we’re finding out right now is we’ve made compliance really hard,' he said. 'We’ve made it complicated for landlords and residents to access funding.' " 

• Seems that the mayor is saying: 

• • • *they (LSCC and the Jackson Administration) had a plan but it didn't work.* and

    • *Now we (the Bibb administration) needs to find a way to get them (LSCC) to spend their money.*Keep in mind that we're in the midst of a Mayoral election campaign.

April 21, 2024 Health Committee Hearing

October 24, 2024  LSCC opEd: what *could* it mean? 

Bibb's Executive Order is a rejection of LSCC's strategy of lead clearance testing and voluntary landlord  compliance 

• Bibb's Executive Order on lead safe certificates is a rejection of the LSCC model. Is this article a way for LSCC to acknowledge The mayor's control over the Lead Safe Certificate program?

• At the last Health Committee meeting, the LSCC "report" was cut short before Committee members could take questions about LSCC expenditures. LSCC's operating fiscal manager, Ayonna Blue Donald, expects that sooner or later, the Health Committee will bring them back to the table to answer financial questions. Could this article be a way to undermine Council's effort to hold LSCC financially accountable?

• Is LSCC laying the foundation for a change of direction in 2025? You may remember when the foundations/corporations began to give up on the "Say Yes to Cleveland" public-private partnership. Their message was shift the  operating costs to local government and we'll manage the assets (scholarships)

  • • Jul. 11, 2024. Cleveland.com. Say Yes program secure another year, but looking to greater federal funding for future. "For the first time in the last two years, Say Yes Cleveland has solid funding, but it’s banking on a federal grant next year to stay that way. The program needs just $1.6 million from Cuyahoga County to round out the funding required to sustain its support specialists another year, Executive Director Diane Downing told council’s Education, Environment and Sustainability Committee this week.

    • November 08, 2024 Crain's Cleveland Business. Say Yes Cleveland executive director plans to retire in early 2025. "Say Yes Cleveland executive director Diane Downing, shown here speaking at the Education Forward summit at Cleveland State University in May 2022, will retire at the end of the first quarter of 2025. Say Yes Cleveland executive director Diane Downing, who has overseen significant growth for the organization since its launch in 2019..." paywalled but note that this story broke the day after the Presidential election.

Public - Private Partnerships

The history of public-private partnerships in Cleveland is that the the private investment continues, but the program operation 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. The recurring partnerships between corporate philanthropy and local government are skillfully documented in Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation”

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." 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 History of Lead Advocacy

The "modern" history of lead advocacy in Cleveland has been pretty well documented by Rachel Dissell and Brie Daniels. Cleveland Lead Safe Network and our successor organization CLASH are direct descendants of Rachel and Brie. CLASH put lead poisoning back on the public agenda, but seven years later, the fundamentals have not changed: housing is still full of lead and children continue to be poisoned. 

There were a remarkable number of civic/philanthropic attempts before LSCC (see lead and amnesia)

Addressing Lead poisoning in Cleveland

Presenters: Spencer Wells, Darrick Wade

(george questions are in red) 

Overview of lead poisoning. 

• Antiquity: lead as a condiment

• Lead paint, lead in gasoline Thomas A. Midgely. Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 discovery of tetraethyl lead

• • Midgley invented Ethyl gas and got lead poisoning. Bounced back and invented Freon. Then contracted polio in his 50s, invented a mobility of ropes and pulley so he could move around the house, accidently hung himself when his rope system strangled him.

• 1970--Herbert Needleman. Identified lead as a medical and public health issue; fired for his reasearch at University of Pittsburgh, moved to University of Pennsylvania. His research was challenged throughout the 1990s, later his results were confirmed by subsequent studies.

• 1978-84: lead banned from residential paint, real estate disclosure rules, lead banned from gasoline. A backstory you didn't know, Dec 17, 2024. Santa Barbara Independent. Money Talks: Self-Driving Cars, Lead Gas, Hidden Data Companies Will No Longer Have to Report Traffic Deaths. "Lead was finally only taken out of our engines by the tragic Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969. President Nixon visited our oil-soaked beaches and decided to establish the Environmental Protection Agency. A year later, Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970. This new law mandated that by 1975, every newly manufactured car must have a catalytic converter built into it. The problem for the Ethyl Corporation was that their lead additive also killed the catalytic converters and caused cars to die at the gas pump. The result was that, finally, unleaded gasoline became what we put in our cars. The point is that greed will always prevail if you leave the safety and governance of things as ubiquitous as cars to be determined by corporations. The result is massive profit for the companies and massive suffering for the rest of us."

• 2014: Flint changes everything. Darrick prods Hillary to go on the record.

CLASH's history of lead work in Cleveland and Ohio

1987-2007: Rehab at Lakeview; Demetrius illness; claims against CMHA.

1996-1998; The HELP Coalition: National efforts to address lead poisoning as a public health problem based on a medical model. secondary vs. primary prevention, the origins of the expression "children as lead detectors"

2004 -- Cleveland enacts lead safe registry. No one ever registered.

2009--Ohio law suit against Sherwin Williams dropped. https://www.cleveland.com/business/2009/02/ohio_drops_leadpaint_lawsuit_a.html

2015-2017: Changing the problem into an issue

• Toxic Neglect

• Flipping the script to Primary prevention. Learning from Rochester and Toledo. 

• Lead Safe from Lead Free: Interim controls vs. abatement

• Defending against State Preemption. 2017.

  • Lawmakers deciding future of Ohio's lead laws hear debate over state versus local control

  • Rep. Merrin Releases Statement on Budget Amendment to Protect Ohioans from Lead Exposure

  • Legislature must not derail Ohio cities' anti-lead-poisoning efforts: editorial 

2016-2018. Cleveland Lead Safe Network: A power analysis. Testing a theory of change: good government/consensus building. . It would be great to hear your perspective on how you have worked to bring about change in Cleveland. strategy that gained traction

• Cleveland vs. Metropolitan vs. model project?

• writing the ordinance/lobbying city council

• water vs. paint in CLE

• Focus on rental housing.

• Designing a legally bullet proof model. Funny in retrospect. Models from Cleveland (Jackson’s efforts to block predatory lending and Toledo’s failure to survive a legal challenge).

2018-2019: The emergence of CLASH as a political force

Shifting from citizen advocacy to political activism. 

Triggering reaction from the oligarchy.

https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2021/04/29/building-a-lead-safe-cleveland

2020-2023: Implementation and broadening the “community”.

1. LSCC becomes the public-private partnership (analyzing the corporate/philanthropic/government model)

2. CLASH reforms (gains and losses), become a 501c3, decides to continue be an all volunteer. Moves to broadens the issue base, musters more forces, and extends the geographic base.

3. The pandemic diversion

4. The 2022 Municipal elections: wins and losses

2024-25: The Emperor's New Clothes