CLEVELAND, OH – Convicted ex-Mayor Brandon Lee King and his former now convicted ex-chief of staff, Michael Leon Smedley, were involved in a scheme with two brothers to convince foreign investors to give them $10 million. According to testimony during the federal trial that resulted in Smedley being jailed while he waits the long sentence he’s expected to receive, he, King and fired ex-law director Willa Mae Hemmons led investors to believe the brothers actually owned General Electric’s former Nela Park lighting division headquarters property.
It’s similar to the scheme the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corporation (CCLRC) employees used to convince investors that there was a “Circle East District” in East Cleveland. There is no Circle East District in East Cleveland. The current and former CCLRC employees who have been pitching it as a reality, in exchange for public investment funds, do not possess any documents that are required to be in the city’s records that authenticates the claims they’re making in official records. The new homes being built under the Circle East District brand on Woodlawn Street were never approved by an ordinance.
Pursuant to R.C. 707.30, any attempt to incorporate a new, legally recognized entity or jurisdiction within an existing municipal corporation requires a petition signed by at least 20 percent of the local electors, public hearings, and an election. The CCLRC and the King administration skipped these constitutional safeguards entirely, attempting instead to “contract” a new jurisdiction into existence through a 2022 ARPA subgrant agreement. This was supposed to supersede all other unidentified agreements.
By identifying an 80-acre swath of East Cleveland as “Circle East” in a financial document without the statutory map-filing or electoral approval required by the Ohio Revised Code, the CCLRC is operating a counterfeit municipality under the color of law. Furthermore, the CCLRC fails to meet the fundamental definition of a “New Community Organization” required to manage such a district pursuant to R.C. 34
Pursuant to R.C. 349.01(E), an entity can only be designated as a developer for a New Community Authority if it possesses fee simple title or controls the land through a lease of at least seventy-five (75) years. The CCLRC’s only claim to authority was the 2016 Resolution 15-16, which was a five-year marketing agreement that expired on May 24, 2021. Even the 2022 ARPA subgrant, which conveniently “superseded” the previous contract to hide the expiration, only runs through 2024. Operating with a two-year funding contract while the law requires seventy-five years of land control is a 73-year deficit in legal authority that renders their “Circle East” project a complete scam.
The consequence of Roberts and Lewis bypassing council, and later ignoring cease orders I conveyed to them by email, and that former Mayor Lateek R. Shabazz conveyed to them when Roberts requested a meeting to discuss my email, and did not want me present, is they unlawfully converted public assets into the CCLRC’s property laundering operation. Because there is no council ordinance granting the CCLRC the 75-year leasing rights mandated by R.C. 349.01, or a petition for incorporation pursuant to R.C. 707.30, the “Circle East District” has no legal standing to exercise zoning power, erect signage, or open bids at private offices.
It’s the same process that must be complied with to allow the Cleveland Metroparks’ board to lease Forest Hills Park. The Cleveland Metroparks 50-year lease terms King and Smedley agreed to were 25 years short and no petition or election was held that indicated voter approval. Outside governments can’t take control of municipal property and force the citizens of a municipal corporation to also live under its laws without their consent. Despite the unassimilated foreign presence in East Cleveland, it is still inside the United States of America.
By branding a federal subgrant as a “project” with a fictional name, the CCLRC operatives involved, including Morgan’s new and unbudgeted Director of Economic Development, Lewis, were using federal ARPA dollars to validate the illegal occupation of land that, by the terms of the original 2016 contract, should have been immediately re-conveyed to the American citizens of East Cleveland nearly five years ago.
When asked for evidence of approval last year, CCLRC official, Roberts, offered a vote of East Cleveland’s architectural board of review as his scapegoat. Its officials approved the design of the sign and acknowledged they lacked the authority to approve the naming of municipal property. It was another confirmation that Circle East is a “fictional” jurisdiction being used to seek and launder money.
The Land Bank was supposed to return the city’s property
On May 24, 2016, East Cleveland’s City Council authorized the CLRC to assemble and market properties in a defined “target area” — roughly 80 acres bounded by Euclid Avenue, Lakeview Road, Forest Hills Road, and Farmington Road. Council President Thomas J. Wheeler and Mayor Gary A. Norton Jr. signed Resolution 15-16, granting the Land Bank explicit authority to operate within the city’s boundaries. Both were recalled that year on December 6, 2016. There was no reference to “Circle East.”
The contract contained critical deadline language. “In the event, however, that the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Commission (CCLRC) is unable to begin the facilitation of a development project in the Project Area within five (5) years from the date of this proposal, then it agrees to immediately re-convey the properties back to East Cleveland.”
The five-year deadline came on May 24, 2021. As of that date, according to city records and documented Council communications with CCLRC officials, no infrastructure work had commenced. No Phase 1 construction had begun. No housing units had been erected. The CCLRC, by the terms of its own contract, was obligated to return every property it had accumulated to the City of East Cleveland.
Instead, the CCLRC’s officials ignored the expiration of the contract. The properties remained in its inventory. The operations continued. They, without authority, renamed 80 acres of property Circle East in a new $4 million American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) deal with King and Smedley. They did so after Bricker & Eckler attorney Jeffrey Harris told them in writing on August 16, 2022, that the CCLRC’s planned use of federal ARPA funds to provide “gap funding” to builders was not lawful.
Livable empty homes were demolished for profit
Over the next five years — from May 2021 to February 2026 — the CCLRC engaged in an unlawful conversion of property that belonged to the municipal corporation of East Cleveland into a “demolition for profit” scheme that resulted in the demolition of thousands of East Cleveland properties. When I left the city as mayor on December 31, 2009, the county listed the city’s property inventory at 12,500. When I returned as clerk of council March 13, 2023, the property inventory was 6900 and declining annually.
Between King and the CCLRC’s officials, the property controlling duo funneled millions in no bid contracts to select demolition vendors. The procedures were so loose Darryl Moore’s 3D Moore demolition company was issued purchase requisitions by a “secretary” in the building department signing as the “director.” Salondra Wallace. I wrote her termination letter for former Mayor Lateek R. Shabazz and reviewed records of Moore’s contracts for submission to federal and state authorities.
Between Wallace and retired employee Karen Hood, they caused millions of dollars in federal and local funds to be transferred to King’s friend, and ex-Community Development Director Melran Leach’s business partner, Moore, to demolish properties without council approval. They weren’t using HUD funds for “development” as the “D” in HUD denotes. They were using it for “demolition,” which is not among HUD’s missions to develop livable housing. HUD money was not spent developing stable housing through rehabilitation.
King audaciously disregarded the instructions in Section 72 of East Cleveland’s charter that his spending authority without council approval was limited to $2500. He chose to misinterpret, with the help of disgraced attorney Willa Hemmons, Ohio Revised Code (R.C.) section 9.17 as a law that allowed him to spend up to $50,000 and $75,000 on any contract he wanted. That language doesn’t exist in any Ohio law as an authority granted to mayors, especially in R.C. 9.17.
“A) The amount for purposes of a provision of the Revised Code that references this section shall be as follows: (1) Beginning on the effective date of this section through calendar year 2024, seventy-five thousand dollars; (2) For each calendar year thereafter, the amount for the previous calendar year increased by three per cent as determined and published by the director of commerce.”
CCLRC properties appear to have been used as bribes
What I observed as East Cleveland’s former mayor, and the person for whom the chief of staff’s job was created in 1998, and in my return in 2023 as clerk of council and for a second time as chief of staff in 2025, was that King, Hemmons and Michael Smedley, were working together with the CCLRC’s officials to conduct the “property laundering operation” that had been described to me by two FBI special agents in August 2024.
The city’s convicted ex-mayor and elected officials like current president of council Timothy Austin, were enriching themselves with the help of the CCLRC instead of enforcing an expired contract. The CCLRC published a story describing how Austin was given a free land bank home while on council; and a $20,000 grant to renovate the Speedway-Overlook home for his mother while he was a council candidate.
Austin doesn’t know he explained how he obtained the home in front of two U.S. Treasury agents who attended a meeting of council to hear him. He also doesn’t know his filing with the Ohio Ethics Commission, that I reviewed as the city’s clerk of council, is fraudulent.
He identified his ownership of a Speedway-Overlook home, but omitted that he acquired the $17,500 property free from the CCLRC doing business with the city while he served on council. He omitted the $20,000 grant they gave him while he campaigned to return to council. I had no other duty but to report the discrepancy to the Ohio Ethics Commission as the clerk of council who reviewed his financial disclosure report.
Morgan appoints a Land Bank official from Jamaica
On January 13, 2026, Mayor Sandra Morgan appointed Kamla Lewis, a Jamaican national who shared no documents confirming her visa or U.S. citizenship for employment verification, as a $100,000 a year unbudgeted “Director of Economic Development.” She replaced American descendant of slaves Cassandra McDonald. McDonald had previously been employed with the U.S. Department of Justice in the Northern District of Ohio. Legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens and aliens in the U.S. on visas can be removed for violating laws.
Morgan, in her official capacity as the city’s chief law enforcer, offered to me without proof that Lewis “is” a U.S. citizen. Since she wasn’t born in the U.S., she had to be naturalized through a naturalization court after being lawfully admitted and granted permission to stay. There are no such documents in her Shaker Heights personnel file.
The personnel I-9 and E-Verify reports documents I requested on February 12, 2026, have not been delivered. Morgan said she can appoint anyone she wants in a city where she convinced new councilors to make themselves look foolish by passing a resolution giving her authority to refuse to enforce immigration laws before she asked them to pass a 2026 budget. My response was Morgan can appoint any American she wants. She can’t replace Americans with undocumented Jamaicans.
Lewis was born in Jamaica in September 1964. A Sun Post article in her Shaker Heights personnel file describes her as being raised between Jamaica and Montreal, Canada. Lewis’ dependent verification form in her Shaker Heights personnel file shows her marrying on August 20, 1988, in Kingston. Ian Herron is identified as her husband. They are divorced parents. Two children. One deceased.
Lewis has conflicts in her education and work history
Lewis’ only educational experience in the U.S. before permanently immigrating here in 1990 was at Princeton University in Newark, New Jersey, where she claims to have completed the four-year degree program in political science between 1982 and 1986. It’s not known under what visa she entered the U.S.
Black or Black-looking immigrants often enroll in U.S. universities and colleges as self-designated “minorities” and learn they’re not under our laws. Some violate 18 U.S.C. 911, Citizen of the United States, by impersonating an American and being prosecuted and sentenced to three years in prison before they’re deported.
“Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Lewis claims to have attended high school at Campion College in Kingston, Jamaica and earned an IB or “international baccalaureate.” A review of Campion’s course offerings before 1982 don’t show it offering an IB.
Lewis’ Shaker Heights employment application shows she left Princeton and the U.S. for the United Kingdom and Cambridge University in London sometime between 1986 and 1989. There’s no information in her Shaker Heights personnel file that affirms she legally immigrated and began working in the U.S. at a San Francisco food bank in 1990. Lewis’ education and work history information on her Linked In page conflicts with the information in her Shaker Heights personnel records and in the news article.
On her Linked In page Lewis claims to have worked for the United Nations as a Program Development Officer in Kingston, Jamaica between 1986 and 1989, three years, when she was studying in universities between New Jersey and London. According to the United Nation’s job description for the position, it required Lewis to already possess a degree combined with three to five years of prior related work experience in Jamaica.
What Lewis shared in her Shaker Heights employment application, was that she was studying in the U.S. at Princeton University between 1982 and 1986 before leaving for London. The 1986 United Nations job does not appear to be credible given its job description, her 1964 date of birth and attendance at two high schools between Jamaica and British Columbia between 1979 and 1982.
Before her Shaker Heights appointment, Lewis’ application identifies two jobs at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) between 1999 and 2001. Manager of Business Planning, which does not exist, and Project Officer, which does. I can confirm the “project officer’s” job exists as I know it was held by Danielle Willis during my term as mayor between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2009.
Lewis is quoted in a September 10, 2001 Crain’s Cleveland Business story, as explaining the concept behind the Euclid Corridor Project. Three days later on September 13, 2001, she was applying for the job she held for the next 20 years at Shaker Heights.
There’s no evidence of Lewis’ claim of creating GCRTA’s first business plan and sharing it with the board of commissioners of an agency founded in 1974 to replace the Cleveland Transit System founded in 1942. Her “first business plan” claim is not affirmed in GCRTA’s meeting agendas and minutes.
When Lewis was appointed by Shaker Heights on October 1, 2001, she was instructed on her employment application to list all jobs, but at least those for the past 10 years. The application clearly instructed applicants to use additional paper to complete the assignment. Her only oath of office for the position of Director of Neighborhood Revitalization is dated for February 18, 2014, or 13 years after she was appointed. Oaths are mandated to be taken in 10 days, or city councils may declare the office vacant pursuant to R.C. 731.49.
How did Lewis get a visa to work at a San Francisco food bank from Jamaica?
In the 4-page application I received from the city the last identified job is 1996. Five years. She didn’t list her work with the United Nations or for the San Francisco Food Bank led by Paul Ash in 1990. He was the first U.S. employer she documented and did not share with Shaker Heights. The Shaker Heights application identifies Ash, however, as a reference.
There are two dates and two spouses listed for Lewis, though both names are redacted. Her former husband, Ian Herron, filed for divorce on December 30, 2009. He was born in July 1959. In one health care application she identified their marriage as August 20, 1988. When she changed her benefits on January 1, 2012, Lewis identified herself as divorced and her date of marriage as October 1, 2001. The entry of her divorce was journalized on January 28, 2011. For the next three years they fought over the son who lived after his sister’s 2009 death.
Shaker Heights officials redacted the name and birthdate of an individual listed as a “spouse” or dependent on a dependent verification form, citing ORC 149.43(A)(1)(a). There is a separate dependent verification form for a spouse whose name was redacted with a date of birth of April 23, 1966, and no independent verification of that marriage. There is no record of Lewis being married a second time after her divorce from Herron in Cuyahoga County court records.
After 20 years, Lewis’ employment with Shaker Heights was terminated around August 9, 2021. There’s a discussion on that date about the language she can use to apply for unemployment benefits. Shaker Heights Human Resources Director Monica Hayes writes that the city will not contest her unemployment as long as she doesn’t claim to have resigned. Lewis in a separate communication expresses that she looks forward to addressing her complaints “as a resident” as a former employee.
Lewis came to East Cleveland directly from the CCLRC or Land Bank, where she served as Senior Housing Development Project Manager from 2023-2025. At the CCLRC, she played a role in what the FBI agents told me was a “property laundering pipeline” with homes that were taken from Americans under county officials like County Executive Chris Ronayne. They use unconstitutional third-party tax lien sales, criminalized nuisance abatement laws all without due process to place stolen homes in land banks.
James Rokakis and the late Gus Frangos orchestrated totalitarian style property takeovers
As a matter of local history, the criminalized property ordinances, third party tax lien sales and land banks all came from the totalitarian thinking of attorney and Greek immigrants James Rokakis and his late law partner, Gus Frangos. Rokakis was born in Cleveland nine months after his parents fled the monarchist Greek government, they had to convince U.S. officials they loved to enter.
While Rokakis presents himself as a first-generation success story, born in 1955 to Greek parents who arrived in Cleveland in 1951 and 1954, the legislative “reforms” he championed as a councilman and county treasurer tell a different story. His parents fled a Greece that had been wiped out by a brutal Civil War (1946–1949) between Greek Communists and those loyal to the pro-West monarchy.
After the civil war the Rokakis’ family had to prove to U.S. immigration officials they loved the monarchy that dismantled property rights to protect itself. In a Cool Cleveland interview about his family’s immigration to Cleveland, Rokakis mentioned AHEPA or the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association as aiding in his father’s initial immigration. If his father was a member of the Crete resistance, EAM (the National Liberation Front) or ELAS (the Greek People’s Liberation Army), AHEPA had to vouch for his good character. U.S. immigration officials were told they only fought as Communists to survive.
The legal machinery Rokakis built with his late partner, Gus Frangos, reflects a mindset that views individual property ownership as an “impediment” to state-driven redevelopment. By introducing legislation to criminalize property ordinances as a Cleveland city councilman in 1977 and convincing the Ohio General Assembly in 1998 to enact third-party tax lien sales and expedited land bank foreclosures, Rokakis effectively created administrative tools that bypassed the judiciary to strip a family of their property’s equity in months rather than years. No one in the U.S. “really” knows which side of the conflict Rokakis family was on in Greece.
Rokakis’ brought the same property stealing tactic the leaders of the para-constitutional post-civil war government set up in Greece in the 1950’s. The state took your property in Greece if you weren’t “national minded.” In East Cleveland, King, who’s lineage is Jamaican, perfected a scheme to take a property in 7 days.
How East Cleveland and the CCLRC laundered properties
Here is the scheme Rokakis and Frangos invented. Frangos was the primary drafter of H.B. 294 (Administrative Foreclosure) and S.B. 353 (The Land Bank Bill). “Circle East” is working exactly as its designers intended.
In 2013, under recalled ex-Mayor Gary Norton, the CCLRC transferred Coventry Park Apartments to East Cleveland’s land bank, and Norton, without council approval, transferred it to Frangos’ nephew, Steven Pontikos. Free. Pontikos flipped it for $1.5 million. It established a pattern where the CCLRC was acting as a family-and-friends clearinghouse for valuable real estate.
The property is “washed” using R.C. 5721.33 tax lien data. First, the lien is sold to a third party (often an insider-aligned entity), then the equity is stripped through high interest, and finally, the property is “given” to the CCLRC for $0 to be redistributed.
The system Rokakis created and King exploited mirrors the very “subversive” tactics used in failed Communist states and monarchies to redistribute wealth. They criminalize the status of the resident (American citizens), devalue their asset through administrative fines, and then “launder” the title through a state-sanctioned land bank before gifting it to insiders or themselves. East Cleveland residents whose homes were taken this may be infuriated to know some are being resided in by 150 “refugees” from the Congo, according to Morgan rehire, Erin Moore.
The presence of these foreign born or foreign ancestried “reformers” in Cleveland parallels the darker history of post-war immigration in the region, where individuals fleeing their Bolshevik, Communist, NAZI misdeeds in Eastern Europe often carried with them ideologies that were incompatible with the American constitutional protection of the individual. Just as Cleveland became a notorious refuge for those masking their pasts — most famously John Demjanjuk — the legislative legacy of the Rokakis-Frangos era suggests a similarly sick foreign thinking. They marketed “community stabilization” while building a predatory apparatus that has resulted in the largest transfer of American Negro-owned land to private and institutional “bidders” in East Cleveland’s history.
Lewis transitioned from administering displacement as a CCLRC employee to overseeing displacement as a city official. She has every incentive to approve CCLRC proposals without scrutiny and suppress resident complaints about demolition as she is now inside to promote a Circle East project with property her former employer unlawfully converted.
Lewis and the CCLRC demolished a home being repaired they didn’t own
The clearest evidence of Lewis’s problematic interactions with the city involves the demolition of the wrong house as a former CCLRC official. They’re treating East Cleveland like Gaza and the residents like the Israeli Defense Forces treats Palestinians.
In June 2024, a resident complained to former Councilor Patricia Blochowiak. She asked Lewis why 1714 Lakefront Street was demolished when it was actively being rehabbed.
Lewis responded on behalf of the CCLRC with an assessment report and photographs proving that 1714 Lakefront was in “horrible condition” and required demolition. Her photographs weren’t of 1714 Lakefront. They were photographs of 1718 Lakefront, which was still standing.
In late June 2024, Blochowiak and a resident visited 1718 Lakefront and photographed it. The comparison was unmistakable. The same dilapidated porch. The same tires on the front entrance. The same view of sky through broken windows. The same adjacent green-and-white house (in Lewis’ photos) or vacant lot (in the resident’s photos taken weeks later).
The resident’s account was devastating. “After the bank did the clean out, the man started rehabbing/cleaning up the property. There is only one small picture of 1714 Lakefront which is in the description. The other pictures are of 1718 Lakefront. The same tires that you see in the picture are still on the front porch. They demolished the wrong house to feed the profit-driven demolition scheme they were engaging in with King and properties they had no right to demolish.
The resident described extensive repairs already completed. Front porch repair, new handrails, new hot water heater, window repairs, cleared yard space. CCLRC officials had been accused of demolishing livable homes, and the Lakefront demolition was proof.
“Why didn’t someone from EC check out the house before giving CCLB permission to tear it down?” the resident asked. “CCLB has carte Blanche to do whatever they want?”
Blochowiak forwarded the evidence to Adam Stalder, the Land Bank’s Director of Community Stabilization. Stalder did not respond.
CCLRC officials conned other agencies to invest funds in their scheme
In May 2023, the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, at the CCLRC’s invitation, began work on an “East Cleveland Land Use Strategic Plan” and proposed “zoning overlays” for the Circle East target area. This was two years after the contract expired, so any representation to county officials that they controlled properties in a territory legally designated as “Circle East” was fraudulent.
The presentations sounded democratic. A County Planning Commission staff member, Patrick Hewitt, presented to City Council’s Contracts Committee on June 8, 2023. Community input was solicited at a ward club meeting on June 12, 2023.
But no City Council vote ever authorized these “zoning overlays.”
Two years later, in March 2025, an illegal Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) meeting was convened to “approve” a conditional use permit for Circle East Townhomes (1832-1850 Woodlawn).
The meeting violated Ohio law on multiple counts.
First, pursuant to R.C. 1107.01, the BZA must include “a member of the Mayor’s staff, other than the City Engineer, to be appointed by the Mayor with the approval of Council.” There is no evidence in City records that City Council approved any BZA member. The board was therefore illegally constituted, and all its decisions were void.
Second, the meeting violated the Ohio Open Meetings Law (Sunshine Law). No public notice was posted. No advance agenda was distributed. The decision was made with minimal transparency.
The BZA voted 3-0 to recommend a conditional use permit for Circle East Townhomes. The vote was meaningless. An illegally constituted board cannot make valid decisions.
CCLRC bypasses council as they’re a government of their own
But the zoning violation was only the beginning. The real assault on council authority came through a deliberate circumvention of Rule 8 of the City Council Rules of Order. Rule 8 establishes the legislative process: The Mayor directs the Law Director to draft legislation. The Law Director prepares it and transmits it to the Mayor. The Mayor transmits it to the Clerk of Council. The Clerk transmits it to Council members with one-week notice.
On April 22, 2025, fired ex-Assistant Law Director Heather McCollough violated this process. Instead of sending legislation to the Mayor, (who would then transmit it to the Clerk), McCollough sent it directly to Mansell Baker, an executive assistant to Morgan. Councilman Tim Austin received the legislation and immediately requested that it be added to the agenda. He was a member of council and not its presiding officer. His request for the legislation was not supported with the signatures of two other members of council. The free home and grant he received from the CCLRC was his motivator. It was time for him to pay up on the “free home and grant” bribe CCLRC officials had given him.
Councilor Patricia Blochowiak objected immediately. In an email sent at 12:02 a.m, she wrote: “I’m disappointed that you’re sponsoring legislation that wasn’t brought about in a legal manner… decisions made under inappropriate circumstances are null and void.”
The legislation granting a conditional use permit for Circle East Townhomes was brought before Council in May 2025. It failed to pass.
No authority to place Circle East signs inside East Cleveland
Despite the failed legislation, the CCLRC’s contract violating officials proceeded with its “Circle East District” rebranding campaign. In the spring of 2025, banners and signs appeared on light poles throughout the target area, proclaiming “Circle East District.”
The signs were unauthorized. They violated East Cleveland Ordinance 503.06, which states: “No person, without first obtaining a permit therefor from the Mayor, shall erect or maintain any sign of any type or description, or any obstruction in, on or over any street or other public area within the city.”
Councilor Blochowiak complained to Mayor Shabazz (who had been appointed on July 17, 2025). “I have received multiple angry calls about the unexpected Circle East banners being hung from light polls in and outside of the ‘target area’ today.”
On August 1, 2025, Mayor Shabazz directed their removal. On August 4, the Service Department issued a formal removal notice to Dennis Roberts, the Land Bank’s Chief Strategy Officer. On August 5, I forwarded an email to Roberts explaining his employer’s lack of authority.
“The ABR liked your sign. That’s it. No matter what authority you think you possess, Ord. No. 503.06 is one of the governing authorities… CCLRC does not have permission to erect signs from the mayor nor permission to rebrand a municipal neighborhood from the legislative authority.”
I added a warning about the CCLRC’s documented history: “With all due respect, the CCLRC was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice. Several CCLRC officials were indicted. Some convicted.”
Roberts and Lewis chose to wait Shabazz out in the election, as they anticipated more King-like relations with Morgan. The signs were not removed. The damage from the attempted rebranding of “Millionaires’ Row” as “Circle East District” is now being managed by Lewis.
King’s 2022 subgrant agreement with CCLRC is another criminal tool
In 2022, the City of East Cleveland entered into a subgrant agreement with the CCLRC The City would receive $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) federal funds for the “Circle East District” project. The CCLRC would manage the development.
The subgrant agreement was clear. City Council retained the right to review and approve sealed bids for any work to be done.
Despite the clarity of the agreement, CCLRC officials Roberts and Lewis didn’t like Bricker & Eckler attorney Jeffry Harris’ advice, and he said so in his August 16, 2022 email to them. His answer as to whether they could use ARPA funds to gap finance developers was “NO.”
In May 2024, the Land Bank issued an Invitation to Bid for the “Circle East Greenway” project. The deadline was May 28, 2024. The location for bid opening was specified as the CCLRC’s offices in Cleveland. The bid opening and the CCLRC’s control of it was illegal and contract violating.
In May 2025, a year after the bids were supposed to be opened, Councilor Blochowiak requested the sealed bid documents from the CCLRC. The response was revealing. They provided some bid documents but stated that they did not possess any “sealed” bids — the seals had been broken internally. It was a ridiculous play on words designed to provide Blochowiak with the bids that had been sealed by the vendors and should have been opened by the mayor instead of CCLRC officials.
The admission confirmed that the CCLRC had opened the bids privately, without City Council involvement, and apparently made awards to contractors with ARPA funds the city never reviewed or approved.
“Dennis Roberts violated the terms of the subgrant agreement,” wrote Dawn Jones in a May 23, 2025 email. “He never received permission or consent from our government to award bids to contractors prior to the bid opening. He had no authority to do that.”
The CCLRC has provided no detailed accounting of how the $4 million has been or is being spent. The $1.4 million designated for “$30,000 down payment assistance” had been directed primarily to high-income institutional employees (Cleveland Clinic, UH Hospitals, Case Western) rather than low-to-moderate income East Cleveland residents. Federal funds are sitting idle or being diverted to purposes not authorized in the subgrant agreement.
Last year former council members Blochowiak and Twon Billings, working with the Shabazz administration, prepared a formal resolution condemning the CCLRC’s operations. The resolution, prepared in October 2025, cited the expiration of the original contract (May 24, 2021), documented the lack of project completion, and demanded that the Land Bank cease all operations within East Cleveland until a properly authorized contract could be negotiated.
It did not pass, further evidence that CCLRC’s “Circle East” is not authorized by law.
I have a decades-long record of exposing East Cleveland corruption that prosecutors have later confirmed. I testified in the federal prosecution of convicted ex-Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor and the state prosecution of convicted ex-Mayor Brandon King.
This story begins the latest chapter.
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