Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.
Cleveland Public Power (also known as CPP) is a publicly owned electricity generation and distribution company in Cleveland, Ohio. It was founded in 1907 by then-Cleveland mayor Tom L. Johnson. Prior to 1983, it was known as Municipal Light (or "Muny Light" for short). CPP does not have sufficient capacity to compete across the entire Greater Cleveland area. Rather, it is intended to create additional capacity and to create a benchmark price in order to prevent price gouging by local private utilities.
In December 1978, Mayor Dennis Kucinich refused to sell the company when a number of banks, which were heavily invested in Muny Light's largest privately owned competitor, the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (better known as CEI or The Illuminating Company) refused to roll over the city's debt, as had previously been customary. This was seen as a bad move at the time; unable to pay its debts, the city became the first since the Great Depression to enter default, which cost Kucinich his job in next year's mayoral election. However, Kucinich's decision was later vindicated by both city officials and the U.S. Senate, which found that CEI and the banks had acted improperly.
In December 2006, a new commissioner for CPP, Ivan Henderson, took over the reins from the incumbent James Majer. Under the new commissioner's guidance CPP is poised to take over the streetlight maintenance from CEI.
Cleveland ( KLEEV-lənd), officially the City of Cleveland, is a major city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. It is located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. maritime border with Canada and approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania state border.
The largest city on Lake Erie and one of the most populous urban areas in the country, Cleveland anchors the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area (CSA). The CSA is the most populous combined statistical area in Ohio and the 17th largest in the United States, with a population of 3,633,962 in 2020. The city proper, with a 2020 population of 372,624, ranks as the 54th-largest city in the U.S., as a larger portion of the metropolitan population lives outside the central city. The seven-county metropolitan Cleveland economy, which includes Akron, is the largest in the state.
Cleveland was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River by General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city was named. It grew into a major manufacturing center due to its location on both the river and the lake shore, as well as numerous canals and railroad lines. A port city, Cleveland is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The city's economy relies on diversified sectors such as manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, biomedicals, and higher education. The gross domestic product (GDP) for the Greater Cleveland MSA was $135 billion in 2019. Combined with the Akron MSA, the seven-county Cleveland–Akron metropolitan economy was $175 billion in 2019, the largest in Ohio, accounting for 25% of the state's GDP.Designated as a "Gamma -" global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, the city's major cultural institutions include the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Cleveland Orchestra, Playhouse Square, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Known as "The Forest City" among many other nicknames, Cleveland serves as the center of the Cleveland Metroparks nature reserve system. The city's major league professional sports teams include the Cleveland Browns, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Cleveland Guardians.