Water Knows No Borders

David Martin: This is the good government show.

Chris Ronayne: You know, the Freshwater Institute is something that has a local take in Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County, but it has a global scale opportunity. That river that runs through is the Cuyahoga River that once burned and runs right through our national park, is now becoming de-listed as an area of concern. That’s an EPA qualification that we’re working toward, and we will get it.

And we like to tell our story that we came back. So I was inspired by that very mayor. I met him when I was a student in graduate school. I had a cup of coffee with him and he said, you know, change comes in inches. And that always motivated me, motivate me to run, you know, to to make change happen faster.

The Great Lakes, if it was an economy unto itself marked by GDP, is the third largest economy in the world. Well, he does. And Cleveland is known for its great ethnicities. You know, we are we are 140 different ethnic communities in this mosaic that is Cleveland.

David Martin:  Here’s something I didn’t know. 90% of the fresh water in the U.S. comes from the Great Lakes. 90%. I met Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne at the Great Lakes Counties Forum at the recent National Association of Counties legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. we talked clean water, lakes and inter-governmental cooperation. Welcome to the Good Government show. I’m Dave Martin.

On this episode, we’re going to hear about the Great Lakes and a new way government is working to ensure the Great Lakes remains a vital waterway hub for clean drinking water and for the economic engine it is. So this is my conversation with Chris Ronayne and Cuyahoga County. This is Cleveland. So here’s a stat for you. There are 8.8 million direct maritime jobs in the Great Lakes.

Overall, there is some 100 million jobs in the entire Great Lakes region. The purpose of this forum was to create a caucus of county commissioners and county executives to protect and plan for the future of the entire Great Lakes region. Well, this group of county executives represents American counties. They’re working across the border and with similar organizations, including the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative.

If you haven’t listened to my episode with Mayor Gina moretti from Canada, go back to listen and then come back. There are lots right after this. Either way. Listen. Mayor Gino heads the international group of mayors on both sides of the border. So here it is. Good government and cooperation between the U.S. and Canada. Another reason why Canada is not only a good neighbor, but our closest ally.

Chris, run and explain where the money goes and how this is indeed money well spent. Good government in action. And listen to how small programs are working for kids growing up along Lake Erie. We recorded this during spring training, so we had to talk baseball and the Cleveland Guardians. And since he’s a hockey coach, we talk to ice hockey.

What it’s like to play hockey on a great lake. So coming up, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Rooney.

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Welcome to the good government show the voice of public service. I am happy to have with me. Chris Ronayne. No. Did I get it right? Chris wrote it. Chris wrote it first time all right. Good. And you were the county executive of Cuyahoga County, which is Cleveland, Ohio.

Chris Ronayne: That’s right. David, 1.2 million people on the great, Lake Erie. Yes. Our hub city is Cleveland, as you said, we’re one of 88 counties in Ohio, two under which have county executive systems, to which I’m in the county executive for Cuyahoga County. Okay. My counterpart in Summit County also has a county executive, us of county commissioners throughout the other 86 counties of Ohio.

David Martin: All right. We’re going to get to good government in a minute. But first, let’s start off, we are recording this, early in March. Spring training is happening. How are you feeling about the Guardians?

Chris Ronayne: Tell you what. The Guardians over and over. Yeah. Seed expected. Exceed expectations, never to lower expectation about the beloved Guardians. And I know to your listeners in New York, we had quite a run right to the ALCS. But I’ll tell you, this team, they’re fun team to watch. They’re a lovable team. They’re good guys. They got, a great, great manager and Steven Vogt.

So I never, ever count them out.

David Martin: It’s a great sport.

Chris Ronayne: Static, great sports town. Obviously we’ve got the, now currently in March, first place Cleveland Cavaliers. We hope we stay that way through June. All right. We’ve got our Browns. There’s always next year and.

David Martin: Always next year.

Chris Ronayne: We’ve even got for hockey fans a a whole hockey team. The Cleveland Monsters. I’m a hockey player and a hockey fan. So we got four major sports teams, you know. All right, they’re proximate to the downtown and on Lake Erie.

David Martin: So you have major league sport and everything but hockey. Where’s your NHL team?

Chris Ronayne: You know what? If I can.

David Martin: Find.

Chris Ronayne: And talk to the commissioner, I have an NHL team in town. I think we’re right. Ready? As a youth hockey coach and my, you know, the fun side of my life.

David Martin: You go to youth.

Chris Ronayne: Hockey, I coach right up through the campaign two years ago. And my kids, who, both with my coach, respectively, they’re now in high school. So, they went above my pay grade. But as a hockey coach, we’ve got an incredible base of hockey fans and hockey families in Cleveland. I think we’re ready for the next NHL expansion.

You know, we used to have one called the Cleveland Barons, but we lost them back in the 70s, and we’re still fighting back for a team.

David Martin: Have you ever played hockey on a frozen, great Lake Pontiac?

Chris Ronayne: Yeah. This is where I get to say the. When I was a boy, I used to play before and after school. The before was the impressive part where you actually take our skates to school. We put them in our lockers, and we play before and after school on a little pond and Cahoon Park right in front of my middle school, back when.

David Martin: Have you played out a great lake, though, I know.

Chris Ronayne: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’ve been, we’ve been.

David Martin: Is a free so you can.

Chris Ronayne: Play, inner edge of Lake Erie. When I was a kid, we’d play, right off what was otherwise a sandy beach and freeze over. But, yeah, you could, you know, I haven’t done that in a while, but, in the 70s, you could you could play right on the shoreline. And I played a lot of pond hockey in town.

David Martin: This is the good government show. So we have to get to government. We could talk sports all day, but we did beers for that. We are here at the national, Association counties. And you just had a, pre caucus forum discussion, about forming a great Lakes, forum and advocate for fresh water and all things in the Great Lakes, cleaning it up and making sure it stays clean and mote.

First you started off talking about something called the Fresh Water Initiative. Tell me what this is. This is something you started. This is really exciting. What’s the what’s the project here?

Chris Ronayne: Yeah, the Fresh Water Institute is something that has a local take in Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County, but it has a global scale opportunity. The local take is really writing the wrongs of our past. We, as a city have and some who are old enough to remember with us will remember this. We have a city that tragically had a river burn, right?

This the river that runs through us.

David Martin: And they caught fire.

Chris Ronayne: It was Cuyahoga River, actually, and it was the 13th time that a mayor, Carl Stokes, who I was lucky to meet as a young student. He was the first African-American mayor of a major American city. He stood up in 1969, and he said, no more. Never going to be another river fire in our town. He went to Washington with his brother, Louis Stokes, who was the first African-American, congressman from Ohio.

The two of them worked on the Clean Water Act. And ultimately, that Clean Water Act helped lead to the EPA. I mean, that is really roots, right? Roots in Cleveland. So I often claim, hey, we’re one of the fresh water capitals out there because, this is a story of return. You know, this river that burned 55 years ago, in Cleveland has now returned to a place where the aquatic life is there.

We’ve got migratory birds, like the great blue heron coming back into our Cuyahoga River valley. We’ve got a national park that goes back to President Gerald Ford, who signed the legislation to create, a national park. And that’s a Cuyahoga National Parks of that river that runs through us. The Cuyahoga River that once burned, runs right through our national park is now becoming de-listed as an area of concern.

That’s an EPA qualification that we’re working toward. And we will get it. And we like to tell our story that we we came back so the Fresh Water Institute was born out of that story. We wanted kids to know that story. We started an education program for our kids. They’re working on the river today. They’re, they’re in classrooms on the weekends learning more about the river.

But it’s also about the big picture stuff. Education. Be the foremost building block, but also the research about the Great Lakes, the advocacy for the Great Lakes, the economic development leverage potential of the Great Lakes, the advocacy. We’re very concerned about in our region. You know, everything from what we’re putting in, what we’re seeing go into the lake, you know, microplastics and a lot of point source pollutants that’s created, unfortunately, like the city of Toledo had unfortunately encountered a shut down of the freshwater system, because they.

David Martin: Were just Cleveland get their their water from we.

Chris Ronayne: Get ours, from well, obviously Lake Erie itself as we process, the water. But, we, we have got a much cleaner, situation today, but we still have the threats of everything from invasive species in our Great Lakes. Microplastics in our Great Lakes. The big threat today is this concern about diversion of the water supply.

You know, will we see in the future that 21% of the world’s freshwater supply, 90% of the U.S. domestic water supply comes from the Great Lakes?

David Martin: We’ve been that. Slow down, slow down. Yeah. 90% of the U.S. water comes to the Great Lakes.

Chris Ronayne: That’s right. That’s 90.

David Martin: Percent of the drinking water in the United States, because.

Chris Ronayne: You got it.

David Martin: How big an area are we talking about here?

Chris Ronayne: We are talking about and by the way, that’s 90% of the fresh surface water comes from the Great Lakes.

David Martin: Okay.

Chris Ronayne: We are talking an area that is some 4500 linear miles, around the lakes. It’s.

David Martin: It’s it’s like the entire Midwest. The northeast, as.

Chris Ronayne: We’re talking about from Minnesota to to the north, dip down to Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, the eight Great Lakes states. And then, of course, our Canadian partners in Ontario and Quebec share this shoreline. I have an interesting job as a county exec. My Cuyahoga County has a maritime border with Canada. And, you know, I always say I really represent the totality of a county like every other Lakeland county.

I’ve got more fish than people in my county. They just don’t vote.

David Martin: You mentioned something, and fish is one of the things I wanted to ask about. Dairy is an invasive species of fish. I think it’s Asian carp.

Chris Ronayne: That’s right.

David Martin: You say carp and and what’s being done to get keep them out.

Chris Ronayne: You know, this is through the port associations, collaborative that we have. And that is, you mentioned Asian carp. We’ve got zebra mussels that actually cling on to through the ballast water of the ships that are coming through the lake or ships that have, you know, they’ve been in other places through the Atlantic and everything else.

And we have, you know, of the roughly. Well, let’s just say 30 or 40 of our fishers are actually, invasive, if you will. And that really affects, the aquatic food chain. You know, it’s just like invasive plants that eat up other plants, right? So what’s being done about it is through the ports and through this freshwater institute.

We’re going to be lobbying and actively working, to change the game. One example, the ports themselves have self-cleaning, systems within the lake or ships in the ballast water. Okay. It’s actually cleaning out these zebra mussels, in the balanced water. So you through technology can get a better outcome for the ecology of the Great Lakes.

We say at the end of the day, the third of the Freshwater Institute. Education, advocacy, economic development. There’s 8.8 million direct maritime jobs on the Great Lakes. If you fan that out in terms of jobs overall, overall, you know, the the entirety of the eight Great Lakes states, you’ve got upwards of 100 million jobs in the Great Lakes states, and you’ve got an incredible, number of people that are living in the Great Lakes states.

And you’ve got a huge fresh water supply going out to, again, 90% of the domestic water supply.

David Martin: So will you just take it a shower and went, I got a great idea. How did this come to you? You know.

Chris Ronayne: I had a couple of things. I mentioned that story of our mayor who said no more and it was a public leader. This is a good government.

David Martin: That was back in 1916, a public.

Chris Ronayne: Figure who said, I’m tired of seeing our city. And time magazine is a place of industrial spoil. We can do better. So I was inspired by that very mayor. I met him when I was a student in graduate school, had a cup of coffee with him, and he said, you know, change comes in inches. And that always motivated me, motivate me to run, you know, to, to make change happen faster.

But what you saw here at the National Association of County Officials is we’re not alone. There’s 81 shoreline counties from New York to Minnesota that have the same issues. And you asked about the inspiration, the other two things I referenced in today’s conference here, is that one we have, you know, other places in the world that are doing a good job of stewardship.

So my wife and I, she was with the botanical Gardens that I was a a trip with her, to Costa Rica. She ran the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. I was the plus one in the down there. And when I went down there, good.

David Martin: Plus wanted to be.

Chris Ronayne: That was a great place to be. But she and I observed, kids in Costa Rica were the tour guides in the rainforest. They understood what they had and the fact that they were touring adults about the place that they were in means they’re the future stewards and ambassadors of the place, and probably the future public leaders. I like that, and then I was up in, up in other states.

I was up, at Glacier National Park in Glacier National Park. Same thing there. Kids given tours about what’s happening. I asked a woman on one of these biodiesel fuel busses. I said, I said, what do you do here? And she says, we tell people about what’s happening to us and they become the stewards of a place. Right.

So the Great Lakes, we want our students to be the true stewards and champions of the Great Lakes, such that they’re in the future in the hallowed halls of Congress, or they’re the next county executive or commissioner, or they’re the next council member, or they’re the next Carl Stokes, who saves the day because they cared enough and knew enough that we got liquid gold in front of us, and we got the world’s greatest really treasure in our own health and ecosystem.

And that’s freshwater.

David Martin: Are the Great Lakes under under assault? Are they? Are they do they have problems, or is this just an eye, an effort to make sure that they don’t in the future?

Chris Ronayne: There’s some great framework for action. I mean, the Great Lakes governors and provincial leaders are organized as a group. There’s also a Great Lakes, cities, which is Canadian, and U.S. and Saint Lawrence Seaway, communities, they’re already organized. The reason I wanted to organize the counties is we’re kind of a tweener between cities and states. Right.

And we didn’t have representation on this. So we got a framework for action with these kind of groups that are forming to protect what they have. You ask though, is there something happening? It’s not as if it’s happening in a big bang way. It’s the death of a thousand cuts. It’s the microplastics that are just finding their way into our water streams.

It’s, it’s a little bit of diversion from one city outside the watershed that we’re piping water now into. Where does that end? Right. And I think what we have got to have is ultimately, I think there needs to be a national blueprint about the Great Lakes, where we’re going with the stewardship responsibility of these fresh waters and work with our Canadian partners across the maritime line because they have an equal stake in this.

David Martin: You mentioned this organization, and I believe I talked with, a member of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Cities Institute. Right. And it was our first international mayor that we had on on the program. He was from Canada. And he told me a little bit about this. Yeah. What’s the working relationship and what is the interdependence of the working relationship between the Canadian provinces and the Canadian cities and the US counties and cities?

And I was.

Chris Ronayne: Lucky to have a ringside view of the formation of the Great Lakes cities initiative, because it was Mayor Richard Daley from Chicago and Mayor David Miller from Toronto that put that together. I started from Cleveland, Ohio, when I was a young staffer with the mayor. I was planning director for her and had that ringside view. What I saw with this great Lake Cities initiative, they actually made change.

They together came together to create, what is today the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the glory, the Great Lakes, Restoration Act is what they create. And I always say it’s bipartisan, out of Ohio, we had then Senator Mike DeWine, today’s governor of Ohio, working on it. We had then Congressman Steven LaTourette, working with then Congressman Rahm Emanuel from Chicago.

We know Ron Manuel from the Obama administration, Democrats, Republicans working together on the common ground of fresh water. Right. And, so that Great Lakes Cities initiative birthed that Great Lakes Restoration Act, which poured millions, hundreds of millions into our shoreline counties over the next decade and a half.

David Martin: So you spent $250,000 of the county’s money on the Freshwater Institute. Is this a good use of of your tax dollars at work?

Chris Ronayne: I’m, I’m here today. My side off here. Here’s Emily Bakos, our first director of the Freshwater Institute. Here’s some of the ways in which we spent, actually, your federal tax dollars, because we were able to get, an earmark from Congresswoman Chantelle Brown. $500,000 going a long way. It is teaching kids, as we said, about what the water is all about in front of them.

They’re paying it forward by working our river and actually cleaning it up so that the lake or ships can get through and such that rowers and kayakers and everybody else can have a great experience. The thing about.

David Martin: So you you’ve got you’ve got kids on the water, cleaning it up.

Chris Ronayne: Working and cleaning up. And the thing about that Cleveland story is in the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, we’re all connected, right? You. So we’ve got you connected, through all those Great Lakes states. So we’re really paying it forward to everybody. I would say in our local application, we’re also getting kids swim ready because you got to if they’re going to be water stewards, they’re going to be in the water right.

We have too many drownings. We have way too many drownings in our community. And so getting kids, swim ready. So it’s such that it can be water accessible is a good thing. That’s just the baby steps. The big quantum leaps are about how do we leverage this huge water supply for economic development and blue economy jobs, right.

That’s what we talk about, in Northeast Ohio. But what I heard today at this forum from Minnesota to Wisconsin, all the way out to New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, in between what I heard for them all the same huge tourism and recreation dollars, huge economic development opportunities. If you work with the ports, the American economy can grow even more.

You know that. A little fun fact here, the Great Lakes, if it was an economy unto itself marked by GDP, is the third largest economy in the world. The Great Lakes, the United States, Japan, and then taken away from the United States is the Great Lakes of Canada and the US Great Lakes states. We are number three behind the US itself, Canada.

And then it’s us, the Great Lakes. Huge, huge unknown, I think, out there in the, in the, in the hinterlands that this place matters.

David Martin: How vital is the Canadian input and the Canadian partnership in this project?

Chris Ronayne: I mean, we’re tied at the hip, right? We are connected on a maritime line, which is just an imaginary geopolitical line. But the reality is that geopolitical line obviously has, meaning and value to us, but nature doesn’t know it. Right. So what I guess I’m saying is, I mean, what happens to the water?

David Martin: Does it never say the fish don’t? Exactly.

Chris Ronayne: So they’re vital. Obviously they’re vital. You know, look for the water quality itself. What takes two to tango on this one? We’ve got to be each other’s best friend on this. So, you know, from Canada, the US, water quality standards matter, but also we can work together on, I’ll give you an example. The Saint Lawrence Seaway, we share lock systems between the US locks and Canadian locks.

We have got to work together to potentially open those locks 12 months out of the year. We right now, we’re open about nine months out of the year. But I’ve been talking to anybody who will listen in our Senate and House delegation to say, hey, let’s talk to the the, provincial leaders of Canada. If we together work together, open up this Canadian locks.

12 months out of the year, you’re going to see an explosion of port activity out of the Great Lakes from both the Canadian, the US side.

David Martin: Are you optimistic that the Great Lakes are in good shape?

Chris Ronayne: I think that we’ve got to keep our guard up. I think we got it. We got to watch our flank. I think that there’s this again. It’s not a big bang problem. It’s just death of a thousand cuts. But if we get together, this isn’t cities against rural areas. This isn’t farmers against urbanites. This is all of us.

You know, we might do a better job of creating a better, nutrient system as we fertilize our crops. There are better products in the supply chain today that we can use such that we don’t see a point source pollutant that creates the algal bloom. That toxin creates toxicity in the water that’s in the farming sector, but also on the urban runoff side.

A huge contributor to the degradation of the lake quality is urban runoff. So you got to watch our flank. All of us have to work together to say we can do better on preserving this pristine, freshwater supply. You know, a little bit further up your way up in the New England states in the northeast, Lake Champlain learned the hard way.

They did too much. You know, there’s too much roadway runoff into Lake Champlain. They spoil a pretty great lake up there itself in Lake Champlain. One of the other contributing surface water. Yeah, but the reality is, is this is within us people to create better technology systems, to create better, nutrient rich systems, to create, you know, better ways to catch invasive species.

That’s on the ecology side. But it’s also within us to leverage the growth of the Great Lakes. I mean, I should say.

David Martin: And there’s no one government who can do this, right?

Chris Ronayne: I think it’s all of us. I think it’s binational. It’s my state, it’s US government, it’s the state governments, it’s county governments is the city. So the reason I put the county group together here with, National Association of County Officials, or we’re trying to put it together with them, is the reality is, is the county’s been a missing piece in this and the county’s in good government.

We represent all we represent cities, townships, rural farming.

David Martin: But this is this is a government problem to solve. There’s no one else who can say.

Chris Ronayne: I think this is a place where the public sector has to lead. The public sector has to lead through right, the right incentives, the right regulations. You know, some mix in between the both. But it’s also the time to say to our companies, you can join this party too. And you know what? Just like nature knows no fixed boundaries between, the waterways, human health knows only human health.

We know we gotta help save ourselves. Right.

David Martin: But you’ve you’ve got governors involved through the Great Lakes. And here it’s governors Association. You’ve got the cities involved with the Cities Institute. Yeah. You know, you’ve got, the freshwater initiative from your city and your county. That’s a government solution to, to a to a government problem.

Chris Ronayne: Is it again, this is a public good, right? A public good, just like fresh air. You got to create public entities that put the wraparound guardrails on what you can do to the public. Good. And again, this is the thing I love about this freshwater initiative and our institute back home. But what we’re doing it in Naco with the with the Great Lakes Caucus.

What I love about this is who’s not for fresh water. There isn’t anybody that says to you, let me in. Just some dirty water. Right. So we’re all in this together.

David Martin: And we’re.

Chris Ronayne: We’re literally in this together and across political boundaries, across national borders, across everything. We’re in this together.

David Martin: All right. That was the easy part. Coming up. We’re going to get to the hard part.

Chris Ronayne: All right.

David Martin: So we have a good government show questionnaire where we get to the heart of your true philosophy of governance.

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David Martin: So we know what you’re doing with, with the Great Lakes and with waterways. But now we’re going to find out about government itself. Define good government. What makes it effective?

Chris Ronayne: To me, good government is providing for the health, safety and welfare of our people. It’s also about a trusted, transparent entity that listens. And vis-a-vis the conduits are those who are in elected office to listen to the citizens who got them there. And ultimately, you weave in good government with good politics, and they’re inextricably linked. It’s ultimately about the art of the possible, what the people say they want to see done in a transparent government that listens.

We can do great things together. So I think that, good government ultimately is about delivering on the promise of why you’re here, meaning what you were elected for and what you said, and do what you said you were going to do.

David Martin: If people don’t like what they see and they don’t like what they hear, they’re frustrated by you and people like you, county executives and elected leaders, what should they do?

Chris Ronayne: Well, you know, I personally still think and I say this to students in sort of public affairs programs at the university level in high school, history and, civics, programs. I say that government is still a noble pursuit, if you’re in it for the right reasons, if you’re in it for the reasons of entrusting, or people entrusting you to do the business as they voted you to do, if you’re in it for the right reasons.

You know, we got a partnership, again, there’s bad apples in every sector, of our, working world. Yes, that sometimes spoil the bunch. And there’s. Because of those bad apples, there’s an understandable, you know, rhetoric. Sometimes it’s anti-government. But I do think at the end of the day, good government is about, people living up to the expectations that they were voted for and remaining true to that.

David Martin: We are the voice of public service. What drew you to public service?

Chris Ronayne: Mind does go back to, that experience with the former mayor of Cleveland when I was a student and I stopped him in an aisle at, a class I was in, in the college lecture that he was a guest lecturer, too. I said, would you take a few minutes, with the student to have coffee? That was me.

And that was him. Wow. He said, I’ll see you on Saturday. That was a weeknight that same week. And he had coffee with me that weekend. He said to me, This is Carl Stokes, the first African-American mayor of a major city. Carl Stokes said, change comes and inches. It fueled me because it both haunted me and motivated me.

It’s true changes and coming at the speed we need in this country, in the States and in our cities. But it’s also a change that I think comes at the speed of trust, you know, and I, I felt motivated by that opportunity to learn from a great mayor over a simple 30 minute cup of coffee with Carl.

Carl Stokes.

Other than Mayor Stokes, who else inspires you?

Well, I tell you, I’m a child of small business owners. My mother and my father, inspired me. I have a great respect for our small businesses in our county. We’ve got some 30,000 small businesses. That’s really the engine that makes our county economy go. So I would say that, you know, private, independent businesses, and owners like my parents have, also inspired me.

You know, I think, third thing for me is, I got a lucky break when I was an undergraduate in school, and I studied abroad. I studied how cities worked, and I studied how government worked. I was at the ringside view of the formation of the EU back when in Europe. And you got to understand how regional governments work and colleagues worked.

And so all of that motivated me. So again, those early mentors, you know, if you’re lucky, parents who kind of guide you in the right direction. And in my case, whether.

David Martin: You want to turn out great.

Chris Ronayne: Seeing the rest of the world and bringing some ideas home. But I will say now, as an elected officeholder, what motivates me every day are the people who do other work at our county, be it small business owners, be it, nonprofit, directors, that kind of mission that’s out there with the many organizations I work with, they feel me because we’ve learned if you’re good at this in government, you’ll learn.

You don’t get anywhere alone. It’s a team. It’s a real team sport. In good government.

David Martin: This is your second term, I believe, as you’re in your second term as county.

Chris Ronayne: Second year, the first term. But I didn’t, Sergio.

David Martin: The first or reelection. Oh, you are here ready to go. All right. What have you learned about government from the inside that you wish people knew?

Chris Ronayne: Well, you know that you have trusted partners on the outside? You know, I often say in Cleveland, Ohio, we have the greatest public, private, nonprofit partnership in the land. I think sometimes nonprofits get left off of that public private partnership. Those, as we talk about. It’s really kind of a P4, right? You know, it’s the nonprofits as well.

Reason I say that is because, what does a county do? It’s in the business of human services, justice affairs, infrastructure and economic development. But there’s a heavy emphasis on that. Human services and justice affairs, which means you’re dealing with people, which means you can’t be meeting people at every corner where they’re at all the time. On every street.

You’ve got nonprofit intermediaries who are doing that with you. And if you properly deputize that army of people who are at the frontline with you, you can get great things done. So what I learned on the inside is that if you look to the outside, you can get more done together, inside and out, working together on the frontline.

David Martin: Two part question what’s the best part of the job? What’s the what’s the thing that keeps you up at night?

Chris Ronayne: Well, we just cut a ribbon on a county dog kennel training center, and I was with puppies all Friday. That was all right. So that was that was a great day. Yeah, that was some puppies. But, honestly, the, the the best side is for me, my staff, my team, seeing that people are in this noble profession, not for the money, because you don’t necessarily go to government.

David Martin: You’re not here for all the money now.

Chris Ronayne: And, that’s the 4500 women that I work with that, that really, inspire me every day. The downside are in county government, it’s a tough beat in the county government. We take care of those who need us most, who often have. For the moment the least, they may be, not necessarily poor in spirit, but the economics aren’t good for people.

And I’ve had kids that are homeless in my community that we’ve had to, provide shelter first and foremost, and then foster care and adoption services. You know, you see people, in a situation in their life that has gotten, through no fault sometimes of their own. These are kids that that end up, in a place that, they’re in real, real, danger.

And so the human service side can be uplifting, but it can also be, a real eye opener in terms of the plight of some human beings who many got to some place that they didn’t even cause, especially when you deal with kids.

David Martin: So after a young teenage, you met the mayor, did you decide you were going to be the next mayor or the president?

Chris Ronayne: I had the good fortune after going to graduate school of getting hired by a mayor as a successor to that mayor, so this.

David Martin: Is something you always saw yourself getting into? Yeah.

Chris Ronayne: I, I actually went out after graduate school. I was a city planner by background. I went and worked for the county planning commission. Which counties across the country have county planning commissions? I worked in one of them in Northeast Ohio, but I was walking across the street one day to a meeting at Cleveland City Hall to a meeting with the mayor, and I thought I was going to a meeting about the census.

And I got to, the stairs to City Hall. And a councilman came out and said, you know what? Mayor White’s not running again. So I called up my boss, who was a county commissioner at the time, and I said, when you’re in, I’m in. She called me back up in a couple of months. She said, would you run my campaign?

So I ran an all city race at 29 years old with Jane Campbell. We won. And, good things happen from there. And, so I sort of got baptism by fire and public service, running a campaign and then serving on the mayor’s cabinet.

David Martin: Let’s talk about Cleveland.

Chris Ronayne: Yeah.

David Martin: I haven’t been there. Supposedly. I’m coming this summer for a guard’s gig.

Chris Ronayne: Come on out and we’ll go to the game together.

David Martin: All right, we’ll do that now. But, what’s the one thing I have to try when I’m in Cleveland? What’s the what’s the signature dish of Cleveland?

Chris Ronayne: I was tempted out of Brooklyn to ask you. Are you Yankees fan or Mets fan?

David Martin: Neither are all of the Yankees. All the way.

Chris Ronayne: All right, there you go. So, this will be the cards guy with the Yankees fan.

David Martin: Together, and. That’s right. Yeah, well, he does.

Chris Ronayne: And Cleveland is known for its great ethnicities. You know, we are, we are 140 different ethnic communities in this mosaic, Chef Boyardee. So Chef Boyardee, you know, it’s funny you say that, we’ve got family that way back when they actually worked with, Boyardee and, he was one of the great chefs. And by the way, Cleveland is a culinary capital.

So let me give you on top of the great meatballs of Chef Boyardee, which that’s a great take. You many people don’t know that. Yes. You got to try the pierogies. I mean, shout out to my friends in Parma, Ohio. It’s the seventh largest city in Ohio. It happens to be in Cuyahoga County. Pierogies are unparalleled in Cleveland, Ohio.

The second thing you got to try is Simon’s. And that’s corned beef. Many presidents have been through the little joint on Saint Clair. That’s Simon’s. And it’s a wonderful one of our experience. Again, our ethnic food is everything to you. All right, sink your teeth into. And I’d say pierogis and corned beef to start with.

The keys are pretty good this time of year to, enter Polish community.

David Martin: All right. Do you get out on the lake? Do you get out on the Great Lakes?

Chris Ronayne: I got a little dinghy. I got out on and, try to fish once in a while and, just have a lot of fun out on the Great Lakes. It is a whole different perspective when you’re looking back at your city from the water. Just gives you a whole new framework. And I sometimes just need the, the, the, the downtime because I’m sure.

David Martin: This is the good government show. We always bring it back to good government. Tell me about a something, a project that you’ve been doing. Just as county executive for Cuyahoga County and Cleveland. What’s something you’re happy we got gotta do?

Chris Ronayne: You know, a politician can never give you one answer, right? So let me give you sometimes say, you know, I, I was really bad. Usually last year we opened up, a welcome center. That is, important to us. You know, I mentioned that 140 different ethnic communities where, wherever people are coming from, we we have a place where people can find out basically how to navigate the town.

They’re coming from other places, sometimes other countries. And you know what? For us in Cleveland, that’s who we are. So we’re proud of that welcome center that we opened up. I also opened up a wellness center for kids, you know, the, the, the place I told you about about, you know, kids that have come homeless to us, counties are the guardians for kids in lieu of others.

And, so we’ve had kids dropped off at our doors, and I said, you know, we need something better. So we started a new child wellness center where kids will get the specialists they need, the health care they need, the education they need. Those are two things I’m very, very proud of. But the other one is this Freshwater Institute.

I know you said one. Here’s three, but the first one I see is really going to change the game on, where we’re going as a, a freshwater culture and as a Great Lakes basin. I said today, say it again in your show, third largest economy in the world is these Great Lakes. So that Freshwater Institute that’s here to steward the freshwater, advocate for it, research best practices on it, and create jobs out of it.

The blue economy matters in these Great Lakes states, and.

David Martin: You have have spent that much money putting this together.

Chris Ronayne: No, we have not. Yeah. That’s funny. I appreciate you saying that because, we think the return far outweighs, far outweighs, the, the cost.

David Martin: Chris Ronayne, the Cuyahoga County executive, Chris Roney I said it right a second. Todd. Got it. All right, get Chris Rock out of the, Cuyahoga County Executive. Good luck with the fresh water initiative. It definitely sounds like good government. And, with your Canadian partners and your interstate partners and your entire city councils and your inner and your county councils, you know, this is this is, a really great example of good government in action.

Everybody working together, trying to make sure that the Great Lakes stay clean and fresh.

Chris Ronayne: It’s about all of us. It’s great to be on the good government show. Keep a good thing going. Thank you. Thank you Jim.

David Martin: After you get done with this episode, hear more good government stories with our friends at How to Really Run a City for Mayors Kasim Reed of Atlanta and Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, and their co-host, journalist and author Larry Platt, talk with guests and other mayors about how to really get stuff done in cities around the nation. Check them out where you’re listening now or through their nonprofit news site, The Philadelphia Citizen.

Dot org slash podcasts.

Yeah, sure. We have a border between the US and Canada, but the water doesn’t know it. And as Chris Ronayne pointed out, to keep the water clean, he said, well, it takes two to tango. The third largest economy in the world. That he said, is to combine US, Canada, Great Lakes economy, which includes eight states. That’s big. As Chris said, this is something we all need to stay aware of.

Another example here on The Good Government show about international cooperation. That’s our show. Thanks for listening to another example of how government does work for all of us. Please like us and share this with your friends and review us right here where you’re listing and check out our website. Good government show.com for extras. Help us keep telling stories of good government and action everywhere.

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The Good Government show is a Valley Park production. Jim Ludlow, Dave Martin, that’s me and David Snyder are the executive producers. Our show is edited and produced by Jason Stershic. Please subscribe then share and like us and reviews. That’s the best way to make sure we’re able to keep telling these stories of our government working for all of us.

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**This transcription was created using digital tools and has not been edited by a live person. We apologize for any discrepancies or errors.