Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin ended a meeting of committee chairs last Monday with a pugilistic bit of New Year’s advice.
Council needs “to quit allowing everybody to make us their punching bag,” he said.
“Stand up,” he continued. “Sometimes when some of these activists and some of these other folks want to try to muscle council, you have a voice, too.”
The council president had been taking hits like winter snowballs over the holidays as a final-hour movement formed to oppose his redistricting plan. Critics of Griffin’s map landed public comment speaking slots at Monday night’s meeting, where they urged council to tap the brakes on the vote.
Griffin – who had a council-floor war of words with colleague Rebecca Maurer over redistricting last year – advised his colleagues to keep their disputes inside the tent.
“Everybody is already lined up to try to come and undermine what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together as a body. Even when we do have disagreements, we’ve got to be very careful not to throw each other under the bus.”
Beating up on City Council is a timeworn Cleveland political tradition. Activists, mayors and even council members themselves have taken part over the years.
But saber-rattling for and against council has a heightened relevance in 2025, as members defend their jobs and as newcomers try to win seats of their own.
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Kris Harsh’s lips are sealed
Cleveland City Council Member Kris Harsh said he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before DigitalC would give him a deeper look at the nonprofit’s finances.
DigitalC faces an uphill climb in fulfilling a $20 million contract with the city to sign up 23,500 households for low-cost internet over four years. The broadband nonprofit fell short of its first-year goal of enrolling 3,500 households. It signed up 2,876.
At a council committee hearing this week, Harsh said he had asked to look under DigitalC’s financial hood so he could feel comfortable supporting the contract. Then he posed this question to DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds.
“For the sake of the conversation about management of public funds in a nonprofit, would you be willing to release me from that NDA so we can have a frank and open conversation about this?” asked Harsh, who’s been a leading skeptic of the DigitalC contract.
Edmonds replied that he’d be open to a conversation about the questions Harsh wanted to ask but that he didn’t want to give up his company’s competitive advantage.
“We’re a disruptive entity,” Edmonds said. “There are other entities here that, while we are not competing with them, they are competing with us.”
Harsh replied that his preference was city-owned broadband and that he was trying to watchdog such a large contract.
“I’m not doing this to carry water for Ma Bell or Spectrum or whoever is out there,” Harsh said, using an old nickname for the telecom company that was broken up and became such firms as AT&T and Verizon. “I’m doing this because my preferred use of city revenue, ARPA revenue, for internet was actually to go in-house.”
Council is set to decide later this month whether to pay DigitalC the full $1.75 million installment on the $20 million contract that was tied to the 3,500 sign-ups.
