Judge bars two from Cleveland Head Start board

Court says Rev. Charles Lucas, Amos Mahsua have overstayed their terms, can no longer serve.

Preliminary injunction issued; litigation continues.

Efforts by the former chairman and treasurer of the Council of Economic Opportunities of Greater Cleveland to terminate the agency’s president and chief executive officer boomeranged yesterday when a Common Pleas Court judge ruled that the board members’ terms had expired and they are ineligible to serve.

In a ruling issued yesterday afternoon, Judge John P. O’Donnell found that Rev. Charles P. Lucas Jr. and CPA Amos Z. Mahsua, were holding their seats in clear violation of CEOGC’s code of regulations. The judge found it likely that the two have not been eligible to serve since at least September 25, 2016.

The case is important because CEOGC, a nonprofit agency, administers numerous area antipoverty programs including the federal Head Start program and local programs for home energy assistance, job training, and work force development. The agency’s budget is close to $40 million, most of which comes from the federal government through Ohio’s Development Services Agency. The dual nature of the funding sources means that CEOGC officials are accountable to both the State of Ohio and the HUD office in Chicago. Officials in both Columbus and Chicago have indicated that funding could be withheld or withdrawn if CEOGC remains outside of compliance with its code of regulations.

The preliminary injunction was issued in a lawsuit filed March 1 by seven current board members, including Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Charles Patton and Quiana Baskin, who heads the agency’s policy council. She was elected to that role in October, automatically elevating her to a seat on the CEOGC board. Defendants in the suit are Lucas, Mahsua, and six other current board members, including Rev. Cecelia Williams, Robert Black, Monique Olowa, and Arlene Anderson. The latter three are understood to be the primary faction seeking to oust the CEOGC’s chief executive officer, Dr. Jacklyn Chisholm.

Chisholm was hired in May 2015 and signed a three-year contract to run the agency. Her predecessor was charged in August 2014 with fraud, bribery, and conspiracy for accepting more than $23,000 in cash, home renovations and other things of value in exchange for steering work to specific contractors, and is now serving time in a federal penitentiary.

Chisholm, who has three degrees from Case Western Reserve University, including a doctorate in psychological and educational anthropology, in addition to certificates in management from a host of the nation’s top colleges, was brought in to restore the agency’s reputation and clean up its act. She soon began to butt heads with a few board members, and in October 2016, several board members, led by Lucas and Mahsua, tried to fire her. Chisholm refused to acknowledge the affirmative vote, considered it illegal, and responded by filing suit in Common Pleas Court on December 8 against Lucas, Mahsua, and other directors. The defendants had the case transferred to federal court, but legal counsel have informed The Real Deal that it may be remanded back to Common Pleas.

Conversations with several CEOGC insiders — who each spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the pending litigation — paint the agency as doing good work efficiently, even as the struggles at the top continue.

Several questions remain as to the agency’s governance, however, including the status of four new trustees elected at the CEOGC’s annual meeting in January. If O’Donnell’s ruling becomes final, and Lucas and Mahsua are permanently tossed off the board, any official board actions they participated in may be subject to challenge. The new board could ratify those decisions, but it is an open question how the reconstituted board will function.

The Patton lawsuit is set for pretrial on May 10; a final resolution of the agency’s internal struggles will likely have to await further court rulings.

NAACP Misses a Moment, but Hope Lies Ahead

Yesterday’s NAACP election was a potential watershed moment in Cleveland political history. It was an opportunity to move beyond the representational politics that have come to dominate much black political activity, especially in communities still operating on old ethnic group patronage models of allocating political and economic resources. This obviously includes places like Cuyahoga County, where black political activity in the post-civil rights era often amounts to a kind of race relations management in which the have-nots fight in the trenches while the higher ups are busy allocating the spoils.







It helps us to understand events when we are able to see them in the larger contexts of structure and process. The political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. has written compellingly about black politics in the post-segregation era. He talks about the nonparticipatory politics enacted by the mainstream black politicians where the undifferentiated masses, the underclass, do not speak. The spokesman is identifiable, but his constituency can be defined only by inference.







The Plain Dealer account of yesterday’s NAACP election said that George Forbes won an easy victory over his opponent and quoted him and member Jocelyn Travis as attributing the victory to Forbes’ being essential to protecting the black community’s economic interests.  The story was incomplete as to facts, one-sided as to sourcing, disingenuous in its analysis, and devoid of context that would suggest why the election had any significance.







Forbes was indeed re-elected yesterday for a tenth term as president of the Cleveland Branch NAACP. To say, however, that he “easily defeated opponent Lawrence Floyd” or that his candidacy was “in response to a mandate” as the page 1 teaser put it, is to advance dubious propositions.







Forbes received 65 votes to 53 for Floyd. Nine contested ballots went unopened because they would not have affected the twelve-vote margin. When you consider that there were 18 unopposed candidates on the Forbes slate running either for officer positions or for executive committee seats, the race was more like 19 people against one. The size of the vote and the relative slimness of the margin against a solitary opponent, who was not a household name, actually attest to a tenuous victory and a rising chorus for change.







Forbes’ team includes several officers — Bishop F. E. Perry, attorney James L. Hardiman, Dr. Eugene Jordan, and Amos Mahsua, CPA — who average about 30+ years on the board. Unverified numbers provided to The Real Deal indicate that local branch membership has dwindled to less than 1500, including many churches, social organizations, businesses and others who hold Life Memberships that were fully paid decades ago. Attendance at this year’s Freedom Fund Dinner, the branch’s major fundraiser, was only about half of what it was back when Forbes was first elected president, notwithstanding the growth claims he made in a letter sent to the membership just last week.







The fall off in support for the NAACP is not just local. The national office is challenged regularly to defend its relevance in a post-segregated world. This is not a post-racial America even though we are a generation beyond the basic legal racial restrictions in voting rights, public accommodations, and the like. However, in critical areas — criminal justice, public education, voter disqualification, housing, police misconduct — there are persuasive arguments that far more sophisticated tools of discrimination and exclusion have been developed.







The need for a strong and vital civil rights organization will doubtless be coterminous with the history of the country. If you doubt it, ask pretty much any immigrant of color without a Ph.D. Neither wealth, power, status is any guarantee against arbitrary discrimination.







The Cleveland NAACP has become a model of exclusion where alternative voices are discouraged, debate is stifled in the false idol of racial unanimity, and power is concentrated in whimsical and tyrannical hands. The idea that only one octogerarian man can assure equitable treatment for 400,000 black people — is of course, ludicrous. The re-elected president has now attributed this irrational view to both the casino moguls and to the local NAACP lay leadership.







The same values of transparency, collaboration, accountability, dialogue and inclusion that motivated the best efforts of county reforms must become core within the NAACP. This is the surest if not the only way in which the Cleveland NAACP can once again become a trusted community partner.







The next branch election is two years away. Join the NAACP now, get involved and make a difference. That is the hope that lies ahead.