Lynn Ann Gries

Ohio’s first municipal receiver is a $400 an hour failure who’s in contempt of court for letting East Cleveland’s mayor spend money without a 2026 budget

CLEVELAND, OH – East Cleveland is a city that has been dying by a thousand paper cuts, most of them self-inflicted, many of them illegal. Its mayors have been convicted. Its budgets have been fabricated. Its employees have been paid with money that, by the strict letter of Ohio law, was never lawfully appropriated to leave the city’s accounts. Its residents have watched their streets deteriorate, their police department shrink, their service department reduced to nothing and their government collapse into a rotating cast of uninformed state and local elected officials who treated the law as a suggestion and the…

Read More

Opinion: Morgan and Shoup will screw themselves by attempting a retroactivity cure for their illegal spending

Honorary British Consul and Order of British Excellency (OBE) Mayor Sandra Morgan arrives to work around 10 a.m. and hides in her office surrounded by her fiscal officer, a Jamaican national and an Eritrean refugee's daughter. No secretary. Employees aren't allowed in the mayor's "wing" like they were during the Shabazz administration.

CLEVELAND, OHIO – Inside the closed doors of East Cleveland City Hall, there should be a frantic search underway for a “legal time machine.” Mayor Sandra Morgan and $400‑an‑hour Receiver, George Shoup III, should be huddled in a “straight panic” meeting. The topic? How to erase 57 days of illegal spending. They should be looking for a legal way to pass a “retroactive” budget that serves as a legislative eraser to wipe away the fact that since January 1, 2026, every city check or contract signed by unbonded and uncertified Director of Finance Lynn Ann Gries has been a violation…

Read More

The state’s $400 an hour East Cleveland receiver, George Shoup, is in contempt of court order he’s paid to enforce

CLEVELAND, OH – For $400 an hour or $3200 a day and a law degree, attorney George Shoup, III is expected to know how to read and obey the court order giving him the equivalent of an $800,000 a year salary.  He’s the so-called “savior of East Cleveland” appointed by Court of Claims Judge Lisa Sadler at the request of Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber.  Shoup earns over four times more than, and has one tenth of one percent of the responsibility of, Ohio Governor Richard Michael Dewine who’s paid $176,000. I underscore his $400 an hour wage because…

Read More

Mayor Sandra Morgan’s finance director, Lynn Ann Gries, is spending public funds without a 2026 council approved budget and exposing her personal wealth to civil liability

Mayor Sandra Morgan's "smart" finance director decided she wanted to work out of the mayor's secretary's office instead of in the finance department with finance workers. So, now, Morgan doesn't have a secretary or a finance director smart enough to prepare a 2026 appropriations ordinance for council to pass.

CLEVELAND, OH – Only in East Cleveland does a city government operate without a budget and officials who don’t know they’re creating a constitutional crisis by doing so. It is 2:00 a.m. on Euclid Avenue.  A police patrol car powered by fuel purchased with a “void” Voyager fuel contract and being driven by a police officer receiving wages that have not been appropriated by city council since January 1, 2026, pulls over a motorist.  East Cleveland’s mayor, council and judge are operating without a 2026 appropriations ordinance. Because the officer’s paycheck, the fuel in the public safety vehicle, and the…

Read More