Cleveland Councilman Who Voted for Lead Laws Exposed for Ignoring Them at His Own Rentals

Published: February 6, 2026

Investigative reporting by cleveland.com has revealed that a Cleveland City Council member who voted for the city’s 2019 Lead Safe Ordinance — and again in 2024 to strengthen penalties for noncompliant landlords — has never obtained lead-safe certification for any of his own rental properties. The revelation has drawn sharp criticism from lead safety advocates and raised serious questions about the sincerity of City Council’s commitment to protecting children from lead poisoning.

Voted for the Law, Then Ignored It

Councilman Kevin Bishop has served on council since 2017 and owns four rental homes in Cleveland, all built before 1978 — meaning every one of them almost certainly contains lead-based paint. Under the very law he voted to create, landlords must register rental properties annually, hire private inspectors to test for lead hazards, and remediate any problems before renting. None of Bishop’s properties have ever been certified lead-safe, and most were never even registered as rentals with the city.

When confronted by reporters, Bishop acknowledged the lapse, attributing it to losing property management help. He declined to respond to accusations of hypocrisy. His own financial disclosures to the Ohio Ethics Commission show he collected rental income every year from 2021 through 2024 — the entire period the lead-safe law has been actively enforced.

City Leadership Shrugs It Off

Perhaps more alarming than Bishop’s noncompliance was the reaction from Council President Blaine Griffin, who helped create the 2019 law. Griffin told reporters he was not disappointed in Bishop, describing him as a reliable colleague and suggesting the situation simply slipped through the cracks. That casual dismissal is hard to square with the urgency the same leaders have publicly expressed about Cleveland’s lead crisis.

Spencer Wells of the Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing (CLASH) responded by calling any elected official who fails to comply with the laws they pass “hypocrites” — and noted that advocates have argued for years that voluntary compliance without real enforcement will never work.

Why This Matters for Every Cleveland Renter

Lead poisoning is not an abstract policy issue — it causes permanent, irreversible brain damage in children. Over 1,000 Cleveland children still test positive for elevated blood lead levels every year, and officials estimate that lead is present in more than 80% of the city’s older housing stock. The entire purpose of the 2019 law was to shift from a reactive approach — where hazards were only addressed after a child was already poisoned — to a proactive one requiring landlords to inspect and remediate before renting.

But the numbers reveal how far the city still has to go. Only about 28,000 of an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 rental units have been inspected and certified lead-safe. While the city has issued over 10,000 code violation tickets since the start of 2025, enforcement remains inconsistent and penalties are minimal. Bishop’s own properties were not among those ticketed because the city did not even know they were being rented out — a gap that illustrates how easily landlords can evade the system.

The Takeaway for Cleveland Landlords

This story should be a wake-up call for every landlord in Cleveland who has been putting off lead-safe certification. If a sitting city councilman can be publicly exposed for noncompliance, nobody is flying under the radar forever. The city is actively issuing tickets in batches of 1,000, and the enforcement net is widening.

Compliance is about more than avoiding fines — it is about protecting children from a preventable health crisis. A lead risk assessment identifies hazards so they can be addressed before anyone is harmed. The inspection process is straightforward, and many landlords qualify for financial assistance through the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition’s incentive programs, though those funds are running out.

At PbFree Ohio, we help Cleveland landlords get compliant. We offer XRF lead inspections, dust wipe testing, and full risk assessments that meet the city’s requirements under CCO 365. If your rental property was built before 1978 and has not been certified, now is the time to act — before enforcement catches up to you.

Sources: This post draws on investigative reporting by cleveland.com and commentary from the Today in Ohio podcast.