Compromise bid in Cleveland may save city

Press, 21 December 1978, Page 9

Compromise bid in Cleveland may save city

NZPA-Reuter Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland’s beleaguered Mayor, Mr Dennis Kucinich, has made a compromise move that could head off threatened strikes and avert a mass lay-off of city policemen and firemen.

His proposal opens the way for the feuding M'ayor and the powerful City Council to reach a compromise on selling the money-losing municipal light piant as part of a plan to save Cleveland from bankruptcy.

The Mayor said he was prepared to let the 625,000 residents of Cleveland decide the future of the plant in a referendum. He said he would ask the voters to decide if the plant should be sold to private interests, as the council wished, provided the council put his proposal for a 50 per cent rise in city income taxes on the same ballot. Mayor Kucinich on Monday announced that he was laying off 2000 policemen, firemen, and other city workers from January 2 as the only wav to keep Cleve-

land from going broke since the council had rejected his! tax-raising proposal. But this brought a hostile, reaction from trade unions, which threatened to strike, and bring chaos to Ohio’s largest city if they could not; block the lay-offs by legal; action. The Mayor, before leaving; for New York to consult! financial advisers said many of the lay-offs could be avoided if the council accepted his compromise. The Mayor was secretive I about his New York trip. But City Hall sources said he could be hoping to get some hints from New York officials who managed to steer the nation’s biggest city away from bankruptcy in 1974-75. Only last Friday, the Mayor had refused to entertain the compromise deal over the plant in abortive last-minute negotiations to try to rescue the city from defaulting on the repayment of SUSIS.SM in loans. Cleveland thus became the first United States city to default on its debts since Detroit in 1932.