An Interview with Timothy McCormack

Aired October 27, 1999

David C. Barnett–Timothy McCormack is the president of the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners and he joins us in the studio. Thank you, sir.

Timothy McCormack–Good morning.

DCB–One of the things that Dion Linder just said is "the people in the high chairs and the high offices, they're not living it." How do you address a charge like that, that the people who are executives and are running the system are not in touch with the lives of the people who are living it?

TM–Well, I'm not living it, so rather than giving you a glib answer, it makes me stop and think about what we've just heard with Harry's consistently great reporting. I would say for our point of view, the system, now the approach, let's strike the word system because that's an awful word, is no longer from the top down, but is intended to literally build self-sufficiency person by person. I hope that that is working in that manner.

DCB–To what extent are the state mandates, specifically the one about the time deadlines, now people are starting to really feel that pressure. This was something that's been talked about since the beginning, and the complaints about that we were only going to get three years instead of five years, well, now that last year is kicking in and that sort of thing. Your thoughts on that.

TM–Well, it's scary. I could give you a governmental answer. It's scary. We're down to eleven months, and you know how quickly eleven months goes in anyone's life. Eleven months, and the program is over. There is no signal at this point that there's going to be an extension or that other arrangements will be made, nor have we asked for that.

DCB–I was going to ask, have you been lobbying for such an extension?

TM–We have been fully communicating to the state about the major initiatives that we're taking so they're familiar with that. You've covered extensively in the last weeks The Salvation Army, Vocational Guidance, Cleveland Works, all of these people are literally picking up oars in this boat and taking on, such as this young woman, she's not going to be left alone out there because it's not just the caseworker she referred to. It will be non-profit social service organizations who are more credible than governmental county organizations who are working with her, and especially those young women that have yet to make the step she's made, which is being employed.

DCB–Another one of her concerns is-

TM–And may I-

DCB–Go ahead.

TM–David, her concerns about her three children, we're trying to build in the Center for Families and Children, one of the groups that are overseeing the well-being of children. Any child, any household that appears to be in trouble, we will make note of that and take an action plan to that household. Her concern about being sanctioned, losing all of her benefits, if there are children in the household, and of course there are children in all of those households, that's not going to happen, God willing, without our being aware of the needs of the children, so it's not as if this is a blind approach in Cleveland, we don't do business that way.

DCB–We've been talking the past couple of days about children being the unknown people in the world of poverty, in the world of welfare. What about on a larger scale, the tracking has always been a problem. This is obviously a problem, one particular problem that this woman has that maybe wasn't taken into consideration before. What about tracking the people that have gone, that have done what Dion Linder is trying to do, she's tried to get a job, and then she falls back, takes those two steps forward and goes back, are we getting any closer to being able to track the people and their lives?

TM–I'm not satisfied, and I want to say this carefully because one of our great institutions in town is charged with tracking. There was strong resistance to any tracking to begin with. The argument was that we have no right to in any way to, two factors: number one, what if there was some kind of quiet, private income that wasn't known, the feeling was that there would be fear, there would be prosecution. Secondly, there was the privacy argument made, that we should not be tracking once a person is no longer on the rolls. I happen to believe that we must vigorously track, otherwise we have no sense whatsoever whether or not this is working. So, that is not up to the level where it needs to be because we have not got the kind of reporting back yet. I expect that, in fact in a few moments when we meet as a commission, we're going to extend that deadline for tracking to the end of the year.

DCB–You've got a levy coming up next week. What is the connection between funding for this Issue 16, which is a health and human services levy, what is the connection between that, those kind of social services, and the changing face of welfare?

TM–A strong connection. I'm not going to sit here and represent that welfare reform is tied into this levy, but the auxiliary services, she spoke about what if something happens to her children, if she had to go to Metro General Hospital, not had to, but meaning that a child was ill, if something, you just asked a question about children at risk. Most of what we do in providing for social services, an older person who they find, you remember the Jimmy Bivins case about two years ago. All with that programming, thankfully, is paid for by this community's decade-long benevolence to social programming, and that's what the levy is, I need to say quickly that it is a continuation with absolutely no growth, no additional taxes, no additional spending.

DCB–Timothy McCormack is the president of the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners. Thanks for joining us this morning.

TM–Thank you.