CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Republican Governors Association issued a press release Thursday attacking Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, stitching together three years of Northeast Ohio Media Group/Plain Dealer coverage.

We appreciate the attention to our articles. Really, we do.

But a central component of the RGA piece is misleading. It falsely implies that FitzGerald, a Democrat who is challenging Republican Gov. John Kasich, is to blame for pricy furnishings at the county’s Juvenile Justice Center. Selectively citing a March 2011 story by Laura Johnston, it specifically highlights a $23,000 custom conference table, $600 telephone stands and a $21,488 exercise room for judges, among other fancy accouterments.

Here’s the problem: FitzGerald inherited the project almost 11 years into its 11-year history. The March 2011 article describes a tour FitzGerald and other county officials took of the juvenile justice center, planned since 2000, about a month before the facility was set to open. FitzGerald referred to some of the interior furnishings — which were financed by the previous county commissioners, and according to a former county administrator, jointly selected by court officials — as “indefensible.”

As the article — and not the RGA piece — also notes, FitzGerald challenged costs at the juvenile court shortly after taking office in January 2011, slashing $800,000 from a $2.5 million request from the court for a computer contract. (Addressing the county’s jumbled computer systems is an ongoing project.)

Although it interprets them through the lens of partisan politics, the rest of the RGA release more or less gets the basic facts right.

The remainder of the piece touches on:

• The FitzGerald administration’s denial last fall of a $550,000 funding request from the juvenile court so the court could hire additional guards at its detention facility. County council and FitzGerald ended up approving a smaller $225,000 funding bump – supplemented by an unused $225,000 that was discovered within the court’s existing budget – a few months later. The extra guards were needed to address escalating violence at the facility, according to court officials.
• Recent cost overruns for a controversial project to renovate a kitchen at the Cuyahoga County Jail. FitzGerald in 2011 rejected a $5.5 million low bid as too expensive. Giving conflicting reasons for the increased cost, the administration awarded a $6.4 million contract, which included a guarantee to hire union workers, to a different company the following year. Construction costs for the project now sit around $7 million.
• Questions from Cuyahoga County Council in June 2013 over explanations from the FitzGerald administration of how much it will cost to finish the interior of a planned new county headquarters building.

In response to the RGA piece, FitzGerald’s gubernatorial campaign sent out a list of stories (including a glowing 2012 profile from Governing Magazine) showing examples of FitzGerald reducing county government spending.

“In reality, FitzGerald has been recognized nationally for reducing Cuyahoga County’s budget and cleaning up county government after a historic corruption scandal,” said spokeswoman Lauren Hitt in an email.