The Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities hasn’t asked voters for a levy since 2005. However, Friends of Developmental Disabilities, the political action committee paying for the levy campaign, has been raising money for at least 15 years.

Levy Campaign Funds

The PAC reported almost $559,000 on hand at the end of last year in a filing with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. This is a decent-sized nest egg for a countywide tax increase campaign. With mailers and broadcast ads, the effort will likely run into the six figures.

Friends of Developmental Disabilities has roughly doubled its money since 2010, the earliest year for which reports are available online. Part of that growth has come from donations. The PAC also appears to have invested well, reporting almost $29,500 in investment income last year from Fifth Third Bank.

Flock Debate

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley recently pushed forward a contract with Flock Safety, a company that provides license plate readers. O’Malley believes the tool, alongside other surveillance technologies, is essential, especially in light of the city’s depleted police force.

O’Malley argued that the technology provides corroborating evidence, such as a license plate hit or video footage, to help identify, prosecute, or rule out a suspect, relying less on eyewitnesses, whose accounts are less reliable. However, some critics, including professor Jen Golbeck, argue that company safeguards on license plate reader data don’t address the underlying civil liberties issue.

Original reporting: Signal Cleveland — read the source article.