A Cuyahoga County Probate Court Judge has appointed a long-time East Cleveland resident to serve as interim mayor.
Sandra Morgan is a member of the state commission overseeing finances for the city of East Cleveland and is the granddaughter of Cleveland inventor Garrett Morgan.
Her appointment was announced Friday by Cuyahoga County Probate Court Presiding Judge Anthony J. Russo.
East Cleveland has been without a mayor since the end of January, when a special commission of three retired judges voted to suspend mayor Brandon King while he faces corruption charges.
Morgan will serve until King is reinstated by appeal or the charges against him are dismissed, he is found not guilty or a new mayor is elected. There were 34 applications for mayor.
In October, King was indicted in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas for multiple counts of theft in office and having an improper interest in a public contract, both felonies, along with several misdemeanors. That case is still pending. Following the indictment, Prosecutor Michael O’Malley initiated a procedure with the Ohio Supreme Court to have King suspended while his case is adjudicated.
On Jan. 28, the prosecutor’s office sent word to East Cleveland officials of the commission’s decision and that King’s suspension begins immediately.
King’s indictment and suspension is the latest in a series of scandals in the Cleveland suburb of roughly 13,000 people.
More than a dozen police officers have been convicted or face pending charges for misconduct, including theft and excessive force while on duty. In 2024, former Chief of Police Scott Gardner pleaded guilty to a tax charge in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. His replacement, Brian Gerhard, left office last year following the release of racist, antisemitic text messages from his phone.
Gerhard’s replacement, Kenneth Lundy, is now facing allegations of misconduct, including an inappropriate relationship with a witness in a case he investigated.
In its decision to suspend King, the three-judge commission did not make a ruling on whether the evidence supports King’s guilt, according to their final report, but looked for any conduct that “adversely affects the functioning” of the mayor’s office or “adversely affects the rights and interests of the public.”
Ideastream’s Jeff St.Clair spoke with the longtime resident of East Cleveland about what she plans to do as mayor of the struggling city.
Morgan: There are three things that really need to be considered for the City of East Cleveland to thrive and prosper into the future.
Number one is to get our financial house in order. We've had financial issues for many, many years, not just the few years that I've sat on this Fiscal Oversight Commission, and we haven't made any progress whatsoever. If anything, it feels as though we've gone backwards, and we need to take a good hard at our finances, roll up our sleeves, and actually do the work necessary in order to right the ship there.
Number two, I think we really need to focus on public safety. There is a perception that East Cleveland is a very dangerous place... full of desperadoes roaming the streets, and that's not entirely true. But we do have some issues surrounding public safety, and we have to address them.
Number one, in that regard, is making sure that our police force is up to the standard that we need them to be, and that we are fully staffed, and that our fire department has the resources that they need to be supportive and to fight fires effectively in our community.
And lastly, the people of East Cleveland really deserve a break in terms of public service, transparency, roads, infrastructure, that sort of thing. People are tired. They're exhausted, and they're exhausted because they just have not gotten the resources that they need in order to live a fulfilled life in the city.
St. Clair: I want to go back to the first point that you made, the fiscal situation in East Cleveland. It's been in fiscal emergency for the past 12 years or so.
Recently, state auditor Keith Faber had suggested allowing it to file for bankruptcy, which would be unprecedented in the state of Ohio. What are your thoughts? What specific things do you think need to happen?
Morgan: First of all, I'd prefer not to file bankruptcy if it wasn't absolutely necessary.
I think that that would signal to the citizens of our city as well as to the rest of the state that we'd simply given up. And I don't think that that's the case.
But in order to address the issues that we face right now, the first thing that we need to do is file the five-year recovery plan that the state has been waiting on for quite a while.
That recovery plan will set a roadmap, at least from our perspective, on how we are going to get out of fiscal emergency or at least not being in debt. And by having that roadmap, that allows the state and others to help us reach our goals. But without that roadmap for recovery, we've got nothing
St. Clair: What are some of the landmarks on that roadmap?
Morgan: I would say that, number one, it is making sure that we pay all of our bills and that we remove ourselves from being in junk bond status. Number two, we have some pretty significant funds that we have to pay to individuals in the community for things that have happened — some of the settlement money from some of the issues that we've had in the past. And so now, let's create some sort of a payment plan with them. Let's figure out a way to pay the money so that we get that off of our shoulders.
Also, there are a lot of things that I think we just don't have the staff right now to do — some very perfunctory things like writing reports for grants that we've received or writing reports and submitting receipts for monies that we are entitled to but can't because no one has submitted the receipts. I mean, these are really some pretty straightforward and easy things, I think, to do right off the rip.
St. Clair: Sandra Morgan, thank you so much.
Morgan: Thank you. It was my pleasure to be here.
