Bill Mason takes a page from the Soviet Union playbook.

It’s a time-honored cliché – the people elected to a government decide what kind of government exists. Thought you got reform when you voted for Issue 6?  Thought you’d get better reform if instead Issue 5 had passed? Any promised level of reform must first survive the involvement of its own people. 

The best examples of this cliché are the former republics of the Soviet Union, where I worked for two years helping develop the new legislatures, civic organizations, political parties, and election observer infrastructure that makes a new democracy work. 

Between the repressive dictatorial Soviet era, and the corrupt oligarchic authoritarian post-Soviet era, thousands of new laws were enacted, repealed, and re-enacted from Kazakhstan to Hungary over two decades. Those attempts at reform continue to this day.

As one moves eastward from the Berlin Wall across central to eastern Europe, into the Russian steppe, and beyond to Central Asia, the impact of these reforms on governments deteriorate from good, to bad, to ugly, to geopolitically dangerous, to catastrophic. 

There are many theories why the people closer to Western Europe were able to more fully implement democratic reforms, achieve higher levels of transparency and good government, even join the EU and NATO, while those further east slipped back into corruption, failed-state dictatorship, even genocide. Was it Napoleon? The Roman Empire? Were the Soviets more brutal to their subjects the further east into the USSR they exerted power? These are parlor games foreign policy types like to play, with no real answers.

Bottom line? It doesn’t matter how many attempts at reform each post-soviet country attempted after the soviet collapse. If reform isn’t a commitment of the people in government from Day One, reform won’t happen.

In Cuyahoga County, we just passed Issue 6. One new charter, on one ballot, and our Day One is underway. Do we, the people in Cuyahoga County, have that commitment to make reform work?

Let’s start with people within The Plain Dealer, who praised Issue 6 as true reform from the start, and now hail themselves with breathless self-awe for passing it. Any review of the PD coverage of Issue 6, compared with a basic review of the county charter enacted by Issue 6, proves that the PD didn’t much care which people were behind Issue 6, so long as the PD was along for the ride. 

One example stands out in stark relief. County Prosecutor Bill Mason wrote his own office into the new charter as the sole remaining elected county office. It’s a rare post-soviet dictator who is so shameless as to write his own office into perpetuity. That the PD uttered not one peep of protest at this blatantly undemocratic power grab is simply stunning.

Mason, perhaps the single most driving force behind Issue 6 other than the PD, is so compromised he is now widely rumored to be resigning in laughable flight from a government he claimed he had just “reformed” by writing his own seat into it.

The entire time, before, during and after the Issue 6 campaign, the Plain Dealer, in total understanding of who Bill Mason is, has whistled past the Mason Machine’s ticking time bombs, which continue to tick, ever louder. The editors of the old Soviet house organ newspapers Pravda and Izvestia would applaud if they could just get their jaws off the floor.

Another defining feature of the soviet collapse was the race to get while the getting was good, before the collapse happened. Entire economies were pillaged by well-placed soviet apparatchiks who became billionaires because they merely managed to beat the clock and get theirs before a new government had any hope of retrieving, protecting, or fairly divesting and privatizing giant industries. 

Sound familiar?

Anyone notice how quickly the MedMart deal downtown has accelerated since Issue 6 passed? Notice how suddenly we have some big Public Square redevelopment plan since Issue 6 passed? Notice how all of a sudden Dan Gilbert really wants to open his casino early? Notice how this city’s single daily newspaper trumpets every one of them?

This will be The Year of The Deal in Cuyahoga County, concluded between the fabulously wealthy and an outgoing government about to no longer exist that is up to its ears in subpoenas, wiretaps, indictments, and jail terms. The race for the exits has just begun, so get some popcorn, you won’t believe how shameless it gets.

Are these deals good for the county or bad, legitimate projects or taxpayer boondoggles? Have they involved Public Offical #1, Public Official #2 or Public Official To Be Numbered Later? There is real power explicitly enumerated in this charter for the incoming county executive and county council to answer precisely these questions. If I were the developer on any deal in Cuyahoga County, I’d be trying to slap it past the goalie before January, 2011, too.

The only power the people still have over their own government in the most corrupt of the former Soviet republics is to record what they observe, because men the likes of Bill Mason have stolen the people’s voices and votes from them. As an American working on foreign policy democracy projects in those countries, I trained people to use that power, often in the futile hope that mere observation could help them prevent further descent toward dictatorship. 

We Americans are lucky. The people of Cuyahoga County still have their voices, and their votes. Only the people can decide who will sit in this brand new government when The Year of The Deal is over, and the people will decide how transparent their new government will be. 

I plan to be a part of that new government.

Representing my country’s efforts abroad to help make new governments more democratic was the honor of a lifetime. Doing precisely the same thing in my own country, in my own hometown, is a duty.

In the United States of America we have infinitely more opportunity to hold our government to account than in a former Soviet republic. Watching and snickering from the sideline, in this country, is a coward’s excuse for refusing to engage in their own democracy. Power hates a vacuum, and in Cuyahoga County, the passage of Issue 6 has created just such a vacuum. If the people don’t fill that void, it will be filled by others, whose agendas are not “reform” of any kind. 

We are watching that happen now.

-Tim Russo tim@clevelandindependent.com

Tim Russo is a candidate for County Council District 7, which includes downtown, Tremont, Ohio City, Hough, Glenville, St. Clair-Superior, University Circle, Little Italy, and Slavic Village.