Cuyahoga County reissues Blake report on corruption

By Laura Johnston, The Plain Dealer
October 29, 2009, 12:22PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County commissioners today approved a revised version of an internal report that delved into the financial impact of the federal corruption investigation.
But first, the county removed eight names from a list of "individuals in question" prepared by the auditor's office.

That was after two prominent Cleveland attorneys attacked the report -- compiled by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Blake and released last week -- that listed them, as well as individuals who have pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges or have been named in federal search warrants.

The attorneys' names appeared in a story published earlier this year in the Plain Dealer, in which both were asked about search warrants that had been served.
A footnote was added to the report: "The Auditor’s Office conducted a broad review of properties of owners who were mentioned in any way in one or more of the foregoing sources, i.e., articles appearing in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, federal grand jury subpoenas and FBI search warrants, or whose owners were mentioned in those same sources."

The attorneys' names were removed, along with people uninvolved in the corruption investigation, such as a couple whose last name is the same as a Plain Dealer reporter's.
Blake's 76-page report compiled information from internal investigations by seven county departments, interviews with 22 county employees, several contractors, and nearly 400,000 pages of e-mails and attachments.

The report concludes that with a $1.5 billion budget, any money lost through corruption-related crimes does not affect the county’s overall financial health. It should not affect the county's ability to borrow money, the report said.