Free Republic

Your tax dollars paid the salaries of Cuyahoga County officials who prosecutors say swapped government contracts for a free gambling junket to Las Vegas. Your tax dollars paid for government leaders to lounge at a secret Flats condo and rake in tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts from contractors looking to land county business, according to prosecutors. And that tax levy you passed last year for the poor, elderly and sick? Prosecutors say one of your leaders suggested using some of it to reward a halfway house that flew him first-class to Las Vegas. The first major...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The expose came not in a rush but in slow, infuriating revelations. For more than two years, Cuyahoga County residents absorbed reports of cronyism and corruption on a scale no one imagined possible. A community that paid little attention to the mundane chores of county government learned of cash bribes, a sham election, gambling junkets to Las Vegas and Canada, sketchy tax assessments and outright thievery. On Thursday, we learned that the sordid charade is finally nearing its end. That long, loud scrape echoing across Ohio's largest county was a political machine grinding to a halt. The...